UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


POLITICIAN,    PARTY  AND   PEOPLE 


PAGE    LECTURES 
Published  by  Yalk  Univeesity  Press 


MORALS  IN  MODERN  BUSINESS.  Addresses  by  Edward 
D.  Page,  George  W.  Ai.geh,  Hkniiy  Holt,  A.  Barton 
Heimuun,   Edwahd  W.  Bemis  and  James  Mi  Keen. 

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EVERY-DAY  ETHICS.  Addresses  by  Norman-  Hapgood, 
Joseph  E.  Sterhett,  John  Brooks  Leavitt,  Charles  A. 
Photjtt,  Henry  C.   Emery. 

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TRADE  MORALS:  THEIR  ORIGIN,  GROWTH  AND 
PROVINCE.     By  Edwahd  D.   Page. 

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POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE.  By  Henry  C. 
Emery. 

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QUESTIONS  OF  PUBLIC  POLICY.  Addresses  by  J.  W. 
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V.  King. 

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POLITICIAN,    PARTY 
AND  PEOPLE 


Addresses  Delivered  in  the  Page  Lecture 

Series,  1912,  before  the  Senior  Class  of 

the  Sheffield  Scientific  School 

Yale  University 


By 
HENRY  CROSBY  EMERY,  LL.D. 

Professor  of  Political  Economy  in 
Yale  University 


New  Haven:   Yale  University  Press 

London:    Humphrey  Milford 

Oxford  University  Press 

MCMXIII 


COPYRK'.HT,    1913 
BY 

Yale  Univkksity  Prkss 


First  printed  September,  1913,  1000  copies 


■  * 


•     •       •   •  •  •      •   , 


t  «    *      ,    . 


53 


TO 
FREDERICK   HALE 


207926 


CONTENTS 

Chapter  I  Page 

The  Voter  and  the  Facts  -  1 

Chapter  II 

The  Voter  and  the  Party  -  -  -  33 

Chapter   III 

The  Voter  and  His  Representative  -         61 

Chapter  IV 

The  Representative  and  His  Constituency        100 

Chapter  V 

The  Representative  and  His  Party  -        135 


CHAPTER  I 
THE  VOTER  AND  THE  FACTS 

The  foundation  for  these  talks  to  students 
provides  primarily  for  the  consideration  of 
the  ethical  side  of  business.  It  was  the  idea 
of  the  founder,  Mr.  Edward  D.  Page,  that 
many  members  of  the  senior  class  would  be 
shortly  entering  on  a  business  career,  and 
that  the  problems  of  business  ethics  should 
be  carefully  called  to  your  attention  prior  to 
the  necessity  of  your  facing  these  problems 
in  a  practical  way.  In  the  series  of  lectures 
which  have  been  given  in  the  past  few  years 
many  of  these  topics  have  been  covered  and 
the  addresses  published  in  book  form.  For 
this  reason  it  has  seemed  desirable  this 
year  to  depart  somewhat  from  the  original 
scheme  and  to  consider  certain  phases  of 
political  duties  and  political  service.  It  is 
true  that  the  pursuit  of  politics  as  a  "busi- 
ness" is  commonly  looked  on  askance,  and 
yet  it  may  fall  to  the  lot  of  some  of  you  to 
take  up  a  political  career  as  your  regular 


2      POLITICIAN,  PARTY  A ND  PEOPLE 

occupation  and,  in  any  case,  the  attitude 
of  the  business  man  toward  the  ethical 
problems  of  politics  is  of  far-reaching 
importance. 

From  one  point  of  view  a  class  of  seniors 
in  college  needs  less  talking  to  on  ethical 
subjects  than  anybody  else.  I  doubt  if  any- 
where a  body  of  men  could  be  found  in  whom 
one  could  put  more  trust  to  do  the  right 
thing  when  they  see  it  than  a  group  of  young 
men  who  have  such  environment  and  educa- 
tion as  yourselves.  Consequently,  I  am  not 
going  to  talk  morality  to  you  in  the  ordinary 
sense.  I  shall  give  you  credit  at  the  outset 
for  wanting  to  do  the  right  thing  and  for 
having  the  strength  of  character  to  do  it 
when  you  know  what  is  right.  It  is  exactly 
here,  however,  that  your  need  of  consider- 
ing this  problem  is  greater  than  that  of  men 
older  and  less  enthusiastic  for  the  right. 
To  most  of  you  the  problem  of  right  and 
wrong  seems  a  simple  one.  To  men  of 
longer  experience  the  problem  seems  a  very 
complex  one.  What  you  need  most  of  all, 
then,  I  think,  is  a  recognition  of  this  com- 
plexity.   You  want  to  do  right  and  you  are 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  FACTS    3 

starting  out  with  a  firm  conviction  that  you 
will  live  up  to  a  high  ethical  standard.  Your 
first  duty,  then,  is  to  know  what  is  the  right 
thing  to  do  under  given  circumstances.  This 
may  sound  simple  to  you  now,  but  experi- 
ence will  teach  you  how  far  from  simple  such 
a  question  is.  In  other  words,  your  first 
duty  is  knowledge. 

I  recall  a  classmate  of  mine  who  was  hope- 
lessly dazed  by  the  requirement  of  his 
professor  that  he  should  write  an  essay  on 
the  "ultimate  seat  of  moral  authority." 
After  I  had  tried  to  explain  to  him  what  he 
was  expected  to  do,  he  said  helplessly,  "I 
don't  see  where  the  problem  comes  in.  I 
always  thought  God  made  the  laws  and  it 
was  for  us  to  obey  them."  This  solution  of 
the  question  would  be  as  satisfactory  as  it 
is  simple  if  the  laws  to  which  he  referred 
were  really  written  on  tablets  of  bronze  and 
specifically  covered  all  the  details  of  a  man's 
public  or  business  activity. 

There  is  another  interesting  characteristic 
of  the  undergraduate  in  connection  with  the 
affairs  of  the  practical  world;  namely,  that 
he  is  inclined  to  look  at  all  of  them  from  the 


4      POLITICIAN,  TARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

point  of  view  of  right  and  wrong.  I  have 
sometimes  said  that  one  of  the  greatest  diffi- 
culties of  a  teacher  is  the  fact  that  his 
students  are  too  ethical.  This  is  specially 
felt  by  a  teacher  of  political  economy  who 
attempts  to  instruct  a  class  in  the  actual 
working  of  economic  forces  from  the  so- 
called  scientific  point  of  view.  By  this  I 
mean  the  attempt  to  explain  facts  simply 
as  they  are  and  to  trace  laws  of  cause  and 
effect  in  a  world  such  as  this  is.  He  is 
always  met  by  the  inveterate  undergraduate 
tendency  to  talk  in  terms  of  what  man  ought 
to  do  rather  than  in  terms  of  what  man 
actually  does. 

We  have,  for  instance,  in  economics  what 
is  known  as  the  law  of  supply  and  demand. 
I  think  a  goodly  proportion  of  students 
graduate  with  the  idea  that  this  law  has  some 
moral  force.  They  seem  to  think  it  a  state- 
ment to  the  effect  that  prices  ought  to  be 
determined  by  supply  and  demand,  and 
when  some  case  is  discovered  where  this  is 
not  true  that  moral  obliquity  attaches  to 
somebody.  The  same  is  true  regarding  most 
of  the  so-called  laws  of  political  economy, 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  FACTS    5 

whether  they  be  statements  regarding  wages, 
interest,  taxation,  or  what  not.  I  have  even 
read  answers  to  examination  questions  re- 
garding the  Malthusian  theory  of  popula- 
tion to  the  effect  that  Malthus  held  that 
there  ought  to  be  war,  famine,  and  vice  to 
prevent  the  world  from  overpopulation. 

This  ethical  coloring  to  the  thinking  of 
the  undergraduate  mind  has  its  admirable 
side,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  somewhat 
fatal  to  a  clear  understanding  even  of  ethical 
problems.  One  of  the  first  essentials  to  clear 
thinking  is  to  realize  that  there  is  a  sharp 
distinction  between  the  simple  word  "is"  and 
the  phrase  "ought  to  be,"  and  the  important 
thing  for  our  purpose  is  to  recognize  that  we 
cannot  really  understand  the  problem  of 
what  ought  to  be  until  we  recognize  the  fact 
as  to  what  is  or  must  be. 

Apply  this,  now,  for  instance,  to  your  first 
ethical  duty  in  the  field  of  public  service, 
namely,  your  duty  as  a  voter.  After  all, 
whatever  career  you  follow,  everyone  of  you 
will  be  engaged  in  public  service.  Every 
voter  is  a  part  of  the  government.  As  such 
he  has  a  distinct  moral  duty  to  exercise  his 


6      POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

franchise  in  such  a  way  as  to  bring  about  the 
best  welfare  of  the  nation  as  a  whole.  Again 
I  give  you  full  credit  for  being  most  anxious 
to  do  this.  I  do  not  need  to  waste  words 
explaining  to  you  that  it  is  morally  wrong 
for  a  man  to  use  his  vote  for  purposes  of  pri- 
vate gain.  Being  human,  you  will  in  the 
future  doubtless  often  find  it  difficult  to 
refrain  from  coloring  your  vague  ideas  of 
what  is  for  the  general  good  by  your  very 
definite  knowledge  of  what  will  be  for  your 
own  good.  But  I  shall  assume  for  the  mo- 
ment that  your  moral  fibre  is  adequate  to  the 
strain  of  acting  according  to  your  conscience 
when  the  issue  is  clear. 

Where  you  will  have  great  difficulty, 
however,  will  be  in  determining,  first,  what 
is  for  the  common  welfare  and,  secondly, 
how  this  can  be  achieved.  What  I  want  to 
urge  upon  you  is  that  the  thoughtful  con- 
sideration of  these  problems  is  a  genuine 
moral  duty  for  such  men  as  yourselves,  who 
have  had  the  advantages  of  advanced  educa- 
tion and  are  to  be  men  of  influence  and 
leading  in  your  communities. 

The  trouble  is,  the  consideration  of  these 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  FACTS    7 

problems  involves  hard  labor  both  in  the  way 
of  thinking  and  of  study.  It  is  here,  if 
anywhere,  that  you  are  most  likely  to  be 
derelict  in  your  duty  to  the  public  service. 
It  can  hardly  be  exj)ected  that  the  mass  of 
uneducated  voters  should  appreciate  the 
necessity  of  such  a  knowledge,  or  still  less 
that  they  should  be  able  to  acquire  it.  The 
indifference  of  a  large  number  of  the  edu- 
cated and  prosperous  class  to  these  questions 
is  both  shocking  to  the  moral  sense  and  a 
grave  danger  to  the  state.  I  recognize  how 
absorbing  in  these  strenuous  days  are  the 
demands  made  on  the  time  and  energy  of 
any  active  man  by  matters  of  his  own  busi- 
ness and  social  life.  Unless,  however,  he  is 
willing  to  make  a  conscious  sacrifice  of 
immediate  interests  to  an  understanding  of 
public  affairs,  he  must  expect  that  public 
affairs  will  be  regulated  by  the  ignorant  and 
the  unthinking. 

In  my  own  experience  I  have  frequently 
found  that  men  who  belong  to  the  so-called 
laboring  class  have  given  more  study  and 
thought  to  these  questions  than  many  who 
consider  themselves  much  better  fitted  for 


8      POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

their  solution.  And  I  have  also  usually 
found  that  it  is  the  very  men  of  the  prosper- 
ous class  who  have  least  lived  up  to  their 
obligations  in  this  regard  who  denounce 
most  vigorously  the  attitude  of  the  unedu- 
cated masses  and  what  they  call  the  truck- 
ling of  the  politicians  to  this  class  of  the 
community. 

What  I  am  trying  to  emphasize  specially 
is  that  your  ethical  duty  in  this  regard  is  by 
no  means  met  by  simply  voting  according  to 
your  conscience  on  such  inadequate  informa- 
tion as  you  may  have  at  the  moment.  In 
other  words,  to  repeat  wrhat  I  said  at  the 
beginning,  the  ethical  problem  is  not  merely 
the  problem  of  voting  for  what  is  right  and 
voting  against  what  is  wrong.  Where  your 
moral  duty  comes  in  is  in  coming  to  some 
intelligent  conclusion  as  to  what  is  right. 
You  must  know  the  facts  or  must  have  made 
the  best  effort  possible  to  obtain  them  before 
you  can  meet  your  moral  obligation  as  a 
voter. 

Many  acts  have  been  passed  by  legislative 
bodies  to  accomplish  worthy  objects  and 
have  been  supported  with  the  best  intentions 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  FACTS    9 

which  have,  however,  resulted  in  bringing 
about  results  exactly  the  opposite  of  those 
intended  by  their  supporters.  In  some  cases 
this  would  have  been  avoided  by  more  care- 
ful reasoning;  in  other  cases  it  could  have 
been  avoided  by  a  more  careful  study  of 
experience  in  other  states  or  countries  or  in 
other  periods  of  history.  One  of  the  star- 
tling facts  of  legislation  in  this  country 
today  is  the  frequency  with  which  acts  are 
passed  for  a  certain  purpose  without  con- 
sideration of  how  such  acts  have  operated  at 
other  times  or  in  other  places.  Numberless 
illustrations  of  this  kind  could  be  given  if 
time  permitted.  If  legislation  is  to  be  influ- 
enced largely  by  those  who  have  not  been 
trained  to  think  clearly  and  have  not  had 
the  opportunity  to  study  the  history  of  such 
experiments,  we  should  expect  just  such  a 
result.  In  proportion  as  it  is  to  be  influenced 
by  men  who  have  had  these  opportunities 
and  live  up  to  their  obligations  in  this  regard 
such  dangers  may  be  partially  avoided. 

You  may  feel  that  everything  that  I  have 
said  so  far  is  very  obvious,  and  that  what  I 
should  tell  you  is  the  method  by  which  you 


10    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

are  to  secure  the  necessary  information  to 
enable  you  to  act  conscientiously  on  meas- 
ures of  public  policy.  I  wish  that  I  could  do 
this  with  any  definiteness.  In  fact,  you  will 
find  throughout  these  talks  which  I  am 
giving  a  great  though  unavoidable  lack  of 
certainty  on  my  part.  If  it  were  possible  for 
anybody  to  mark  out  a  definite  program  by 
which  a  voter  or  a  representative  or  any 
government  employee  could  make  sure  that 
the  devotion  of  even  two  or  three  hours  a 
day  of  conscientious  labor  would  make  all  of 
his  problems  plain,  there  would  be  none  of 
that  difficulty  which  I  have  mentioned.  It  is 
because  no  such  program  can  be  marked  out 
and  because,  whatever  degree  of  study  is 
given  to  these  questions,  there  will  always  be 
difference  of  opinion,  that  the  problem  is  as 
complex  as  I  have  said. 

In  brief,  my  purpose  is  not  to  solve  your 
ethical  problems  for  you,  but  merely  to  make 
you  conscious  of  them.  You  will  find  me 
again  and  again  stating  specific  problems  to 
which  I  cannot  myself  give  the  answer  even 
from  the  point  of  view  of  what  constitutes 
good  moral  conduct.   It  is  because  I  believe 


.   THE  VOTER  AND  THE  FACTS   11 

that  much  injustice  is  done  in  the  world 
from  the  failure  to  recognize  how  nicely 
balanced  many  of  these  problems  are  and 
how  necessary  it  is  that  you  should  never 
forget  this  in  making  your  judgments  of 
men  and  measures. 

There  is  a  vast  amount  of  injustice  done 
to  our  public  men  in  the  press,  in  periodical 
literature,  and  in  casual  conversation, 
through  the  cocksure  attitude  of  many 
people  that  they  know  exactly  what  is  right 
and  that  anybody  who  takes  a  stand  con- 
trary to  their  own  is  doing  so  from  some 
unworthy  motive.  You  will  have  to  decide 
for  yourselves  in  every  case  as  you  best  may 
at  the  moment  what  your  own  action  should 
be,  but  you  must  recognize  also  that  other 
men  will  have  to  decide  for  themselves. 
If  you  conscientiously  recognize  how  fre- 
quently you  are  puzzled  regarding  your  own 
decision,  you  will  also  realize  that  matters 
which  seem  clear  to  you  may  puzzle  others. 
The  easy  and  censorious  judgment  of  public 
men  on  the  part  of  those  who  have  only  half 
thought  out  the  problems  which  these  men 
have  to  confront  I  consider  one  of  the  most 


12    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

immoral  characteristics  of  the  modern  citizen 
in  his  relation  to  public  service. 

Unquestionably  the  average  man — even 
the  average  educated  man — derives  his  judg- 
ments, or  rather  his  impressions,  since  usu- 
ally they  are  not  worthy  the  name  of 
judgments,  regarding  public  affairs  very 
largely  from  the  daily  press  and  popular 
periodicals.  The  power  of  these  publica- 
tions in  affecting  public  opinion  can,  I  think, 
hardly  be  exaggerated.  Some  years  ago  the 
press  was  the  all-important  factor.  The 
recent  growth  of  the  popular  and  low-priced 
magazine  has  introduced  a  new  element 
which  is  largely  reflected  in  the  votes  of  any 
election  at  the  present  time.  Many  of  you 
probably  think  in  a  superior  way  that  you 
do  not  believe  what  you  see  in  the  news- 
papers. It  is  a  somewhat  popular  practice 
among  educated  people  to  profess  skepti- 
cism regarding  what  the  newspapers  say  and 
to  believe  that  they  themselves  make  up  their 
minds  from  some  more  reliable  source,  or 
through  some  more  careful  thinking,  than  is 
implied  by  the  mere  acceptance  of  a  news- 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  FACTS   13 

paper  argument.  If  you  do  this  I  think  you 
probably  delude  yourselves. 

When  you  have  seen  a  thing  again  and 
again  in  the  press  you  forget  very  likely 
where  you  have  seen  it,  but  it  becomes  a  part 
of  your  thinking  and  you  gradually  begin 
to  make  positive  assertions  as  to  what  you 
know  about  something,  deceiving  yourselves 
with  the  idea  that  you  have  really  given  some 
independent  test  to  the  information  or  some 
independent  thought  to  the  problem.  I  do 
not  know  that  anything  else  is  possible  in  a 
democratic  community,  and  I  do  not  mean 
to  imply  that  the  power  of  the  press  is 
greater  than  it  should  be.  It  is  easy  to  laugh 
at  the  old-fashioned  phrase  that  the  press  is 
the  "palladium  of  our  liberties,"  but  the  fact 
remains  that  the  free  press  is  the  greatest 
safeguard  of  democratic  government. 

I  wish  to  talk  perfectly  frankly  on  this 
subject  and  can  best  do  so  probably  by  illus- 
trating from  my  own  experience.  That 
experience  put  very  bluntly  is  that  news- 
paper correspondents  or  reporters  are  to  be 
trusted  much  more  than  the  public  believes, 
and  editors  and  managers  much  less  so.    Let 


14    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

me  explain  what  I  mean.  It  is,  of  course, 
true  that  there  are  some  cheap  reporters  of 
the  lower  type  who  wish  only  to  create  some 
sensation  or  to  make  trouble  for  somebody; 
but  the  profession  of  newspaper  correspond- 
ent, besides  being  one  of  the  most  difficult,  is 
one  of  the  most  honorable  of  any  profession 
today.  In  fact,  from  my  own  personal 
experience,  I  hardly  know  of  any  body  of 
men  who  hold  more  conscientiously  to  the 
principle  which  the  scientist  is  sometimes 
inclined  to  arrogate  to  himself,  of  telling  the 
"facts  as  they  are."  The  typical  newspaper 
man  has  simply  one  ambition — to  get  the 
news.  He  may  frequently  offend  the  indi- 
vidual by  the  methods  which  he  adopts  or  by 
the  publication  of  matters  which  the  indi- 
vidual would  rather  have  kept  private,  but 
it  is  a  part  of  his  code  of  ethics  that  he  does 
not  perform  his  duty  unless  he  furnishes  the 
news  of  the  day  to  those  who  wish  to  have  it. 
What  makes  his  code  of  ethics  high  is 
that  he  wishes  to  publish  the  news  exactly  as 
it  is.  There  are  special  correspondents  at 
large  political  centres,  such  as  Washington, 
for  individual  papers,  and  there  are  several 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  FACTS   15 

great  news  agencies,  such  as  the  Associated 
Press  and  the  United  Press,  whose  repre- 
sentatives furnish  news  for  a  large  number 
of  papers,  including  papers  of  every  variety 
of  political  interest.  I  think  it  may  be  said 
with  certainty  that  both  the  representatives 
of  such  associations  and  the  personal  corre- 
spondents as  well  really  wish  to  publish 
nothing  but  the  plain,  unvarnished  truth. 
One  must  really  have  come  into  pretty  close 
contact  with  men  of  this  class  to  realize  how 
clean-cut  their  code  of  ethics  is  in  this  regard. 
You  may  say,  then,  that  the  conclusion  is 
that  we  may  probably  believe  whatever  we 
read  in  the  newspapers,  and  that,  with  intel- 
ligent men  reporting  the  conduct  of  public 
affairs,  the  knowledge  derived  from  news- 
papers is  adequate  as  a  basis  for  judgment 
so  far  as  the  ordinary  man  is  concerned.  The 
matter,  however,  is  not  so  simple.  In  the 
first  place,  it  frequently  may  happen  that, 
with  the  very  best  intentions,  the  corre- 
spondent may  get  his  news  twisted  through 
his  ignorance  of  the  subject  which  he  is 
reporting.  This  is  especially  easy  in  the  case 
of  public  measures  involving  intricate  detail 


16    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

regarding  economic  regulation.  I  have  often 
seen  very  misleading  reports  published  re- 
garding the  opinions  of  some  individual 
given  in  the  form  of  an  interview,  or  the 
findings  of  some  bureau  or  commission, 
where  it  was  obvious  that  the  writer  had 
acted  in  perfectly  good  faith  and  had  in- 
tended to  be  absolutely  accurate.  The 
trouble  was  that  he  did  not  know 
enough  about  the  principles  involved  in  the 
matter  under  discussion,  or  enough  about  the 
past  history  of  the  measure,  really  to  under- 
stand the  true  purport  of  what  had  been 
said.  Naturally,  a  newspaper  reporter, 
obliged  to  report  the  news  of  the  day  for  the 
next  morning's  edition,  cannot  possibly  take 
the  time  to  make  any  individual  study  in  a 
case  of  this  kind.  Consequently,  with  the 
most  honest  intentions,  he  may  easily  give 
out  misleading  information. 

In  the  second  place,  you  should  remember 
that  there  is  a  difference  between  "news"  and 
facts.  Senator  A.,  for  instance,  may  make 
the  charge  on  the  floor  of  the  Senate  that  a 
corruption  fund  has  been  raised  to  prevent 
the  passage  of  a  certain  popular  measure. 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  FACTS   17 

The  reporter  is  bound  to  report  such  a  piece 
of  news.  Senator  A.  has  actually  made  the 
charge  and  the  public  is  entitled  to  know  it. 
It  is  not  necessarily  any  business  of  the 
newspaper  correspondent  to  investigate  the 
charge  which  has  been  made  by  Senator  A. 
This  charge  in  itself  may  be  true  or  false, 
but  that  for  the  moment  is  not  a  matter  of 
news,  but  a  matter  to  be  settled  by  proper 
investigation.  It  may  be  that  Mr.  X.,  the 
great  banker,  gives  a  yachting  party,  on 
which  he  invites  a  number  of  well-known 
Congressmen.  This  again  is  a  piece  of  news 
which  as  news  is  accurate,  but  which  carries 
in  itself  no  necessary  implication  of  a  desire 
to  influence  legislation  to  his  own  advantage. 
It  is  obvious,  then,  that  even  in  reading  the 
most  accurate  news  one  should  observe  great 
care  regarding  the  question  as  to  how  far  one 
can  draw  conclusions  from  mere  news  items. 
Here  is  where  the  reader  is  likely  to  be 
mis-led  through  the  particular  policy  or 
prejudice  of  the  newspaper  management  or 
editor.  The  newspaper  correspondent  from 
Washington  aims  to  report  to  his  paper  the 
news  of  the  day  as  he  finds  it.    How  much 


18    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

of  this  news  is  to  be  printed,  or  what  par- 
ticular color  is  to  be  given  to  it,  is  a  matter 
which  is  determined  in  the  newspaper  office 
itself.  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  here  any 
necessary  dishonesty  of  motive,  but  simply 
the  inevitable  working  of  human  nature. 
Newspapers  and  editors  represent  distinct 
and  definite  policies,  or  they  represent  par- 
ticular parties,  or  in  some  cases  particular 
interests.  Even  the  most  honest  men  may 
differ  as  to  the  significance  or  importance 
of  different  events.  And  we  may  even  more 
expect  that  the  men  who  are  in  the  daily 
heat  of  conflict  and  argument  must  see 
everything  and  interpret  everything  through 
glasses  of  one  color.  The  philosophical 
detachment,  the  freedom  from  bias,  the  fear 
to  draw  conclusions  from  inadequate  evi- 
dence, is  not  for  them. 

Yet  it  is  necessary  that  the  decision  as  to 
what  news  should  be  published  should  be 
made  in  the  newspaper  office  itself.  What 
are  the  important  facts  brought  out  in  a 
public  hearing?  What  are  the  important 
statements  in  a  public  speech,  and  so  on? 
I  do  not  refer  only  to  the  formal  opinions 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  FACTS   19 

expressed  on  the  editorial  page,  but  to  the 
color  which  is  given  to  the  facts  in  the  news 
columns  themselves  by  a  choice,  made  in  the 
office,  of  what  shall  be  printed.  It  is  not  the 
business  of  a  newspaper  correspondent  as  a 
correspondent  to  have  opinions.  It  is  the 
business  of  the  newspaper  editor  or  news- 
paper management  to  have  opinions  and  to 
stand  for  them.  Consequently,  however 
impartial  the  intentions  of  the  correspond- 
ent, even  his  news  is  likely  to  be  colored 
before  it  gets  into  print  by  the  policy  which 
the  paper  represents.  To  a  certain  extent, 
of  course,  the  newspaper  correspondent 
knows  pretty  well  what  kind  of  news  is 
popular  in  the  office  and  is,  therefore,  under 
the  temptation  to  send  only  what  he  thinks 
will  be  acceptable  there.  But  even  if  he  does 
not  yield  to  this  temptation  he  cannot  be  cer- 
tain that  his  whole  story  will  be  published. 
It  is  a  common  saying  today  that  nobody 
reads  more  than  the  headlines,  and  this  is 
unfortunately  only  too  true.  The  man  who 
writes  the  news,  however,  does  not  write  the 
headlines.  I  have  sometimes  maintained 
that  the  two  ought  to  go  together,  but  I  am 


20    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

told  that  this  is  impossible;  that  headline 
writing  is  an  art  in  itself  and  that,  if  head- 
lines are  to  be  made  effective,  they  must  be 
turned  out  by  a  master  of  the  craft.  This 
being  the  case,  however,  the  headline  be- 
comes in  itself  an  influence  on  public  opinion 
and  it  not  infrequently  happens  that  the 
headline  writer  either  has  not  fully  under- 
stood the  news  report  which  he  has  read,  or 
that  from  his  own  prejudice  or  from  the 
known  prejudice  of  the  management,  he 
gives  it  a  twist  which  the  correspondent 
himself  never  intended. 

Perhaps  I  can  best  illustrate  by  a  per- 
sonal story.  A  representative  of  the  Asso- 
ciated Press  once  called  on  me  with  some 
half  information  which  he  wished  to  print 
and  asked  if  I  had  anything  further  to  add  to 
it.  I  had  had  much  experience  with  him  and 
knew  him  to  be  absolutely  fair-minded  and 
anxious  to  tell  the  facts  regarding  any  situa- 
tion as  impartially  as  possible.  I  told  him 
frankly  the  whole  situation,  which  he  also 
checked  up  from  other  sources.  The  next 
day  at  breakfast  I  read  a  front  page  column 
regarding   the   matter   which   irritated   me 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  FACTS   21 

extremely.  The  reporter  came  in  again  that 
day  and,  although  I  had  meant  to  say 
nothing  about  it,  I  evidently  showed  some 
signs  of  my  feeling,  as  he  charged  me  with 
being  "grouchy"  and  wanted  to  know  what 
the  trouble  was.  I  told  him  it  was  on 
account  of  the  story  which  I  had  given  him 
the  day  before  and  which  he  had  misused. 
He  then  took  the  paper  off  the  desk  and, 
with  one  hand  over  the  head  of  the  column, 
which  I  did  not  notice,  asked  me  to  read  the 
story  through  again  carefully  and  see  what 
the  trouble  was.  I  did  so  and  was  greatly 
surprised.  I  promptly  apologized  and  said, 
"What  was  the  trouble  with  me?  When  I 
read  that  this  morning  I  thought  you  had 
garbled  it,  but  it  reads  now  exactly  as  I  gave 
it  to  you  yesterday."  He  smiled  and,  taking 
his  hand  off  the  headlines,  said,  "There  is 
your  trouble.  And  that  was  as  much  of  a 
surprise  to  me  as  to  you."  Anyone  reading 
the  story  itself  carefully  would  see  that  it 
did  not  bear  out  at  all  the  implication  of  the 
headlines,  but  even  I,  who  was  more  inter- 
ested than  anybody  else,  had  received  my 
impression  of  it  from  the  headlines  alone. 


22    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

Another  great  difficulty  with  trusting  too 
much  to  the  press  for  knowledge  lies  in  what 
seems  to  be  an  established  rule  on  the  part 
of  newspapers  to  retract  as  little  as  possible 
any  statement  which  has  already  been  made. 
I  have  heard  this  policy  defended  by  news- 
paper men  as  absolutely  justifiable  on  the 
ground  that  retractions  never  have  any 
influence  and  that  people  are  interested  in 
what  did  happen  yesterday  and  not  in  find- 
ing out  that  something  did  not  happen  a 
week  ago,  about  which  they  have  already 
forgotten.  The  trouble  is  that  people  have 
not  already  forgotten  about  the  past  inci- 
dent. It  has  sunk  somewhere  into  their 
consciousness  and  the  failure  to  retract 
simply  increases  the  influence  of  the  first 
misstatement. 

This  is  too  well-known  a  fact  to  need  to 
be  discussed,  but  in  order  to  illustrate  what 
I  have  said  as  to  the  difference  between  the 
newspaper  correspondent  and  the  news- 
paper office  itself,  I  may  perhaps,  at  the 
risk  of  too  much  personal  reminiscence,  tell 
one  other  story  of  my  own  experience. 
When  the  Tariff  Board  made  its  first  report 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  FACTS       23 

a  prominent  Democratic  senator  challenged 
certain  figures  on  the  floor  of  the  Senate, 
claiming  that  they  had  been  taken  from  a 
publication  of  the  Canadian  government, 
but  had  not  been  given  accurately  as  con- 
tained in  the  Canadian  document  itself.  At 
once  a  leading  Republican  senator  and  a 
leading  insurgent  senator  challenged  this 
statement  in  turn.  A  hasty  examination  of 
the  two  documents  was  held  by  the  three  on 
the  floor,  whereupon  both  the  Republican 
and  the  insurgent  senator  agreed  that  the 
original  criticism  was  true.  This  was,  of 
course,  a  vital  matter  if  the  figures  offered 
by  the  Tariff  Board  on  any  question  were 
to  be  considered  seriously  in  connection  with 
legislation.  Wide  publicity  was  given  to 
the  fact  that  leaders  of  the  three  different 
groups  in  the  Senate  had  all  agreed  that  our 
figures  were  incorrect  and  that  a  serious 
error  had  been  made.  This  was  entirely 
proper.  It  was  distinctly  a  piece  of  news 
and  correspondents  quite  properly  reported 
it.  The  incident  of  the  charge  and  the 
agreement  of  the  leaders  had  actually 
occurred.      Two   or  three  leading  papers, 


24    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

besides  printing  the  news  as  it  had  occurred, 
came  out  with  editorials  saying  that  the  inci- 
dent had  unquestionably  largely  destroyed 
the  confidence  of  the  public  in  the  work  of 
the  Tariff  Board. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  figures  as  printed 
in  the  Tariff  Board  report  were  entirely 
correct,  and  the  seeming  changes  made  from 
the  original  figures  had  been  made  in  exact 
accordance  with  directions  from  the  Direc- 
tor of  the  Canadian  Census,  who  had  first 
been  consulted  in  the  matter.  They  were 
necessary  in  order  to  make  the  Canadian 
figures  comparable  with  American  figures. 
This  matter  was  taken  up  with  the  senators 
in  question  and  with  the  documents  before 
them  they  were  all  quickly  convinced  that  an 
error  had  been  made  in  the  original  criticism. 
Very  generously  they  insisted,  not  only  on 
amending  the  record,  but  on  making  a  public 
retraction  on  the  floor  of  the  Senate,  which 
was  done  some  days  later  in  a  very  hand- 
some manner.  This  retraction  of  theirs  was 
also  news — news,  I  should  say,  as  important 
and  as  interesting  to  the  public  as  the  origi- 
nal incident  itself.    The  retraction  was  also 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  FACTS       25 

reported  by  the  correspondents  to  their 
papers  as  news  of  the  day,  but  it  was  not 
printed.  The  newspaper  office  decided  that 
it  was  not  worth  while,  or  that  the  incident 
was  closed,  or,  in  the  case  of  those  papers 
which  had  drawn  editorial  conclusions  from 
the  first  news,  that  it  was  not  wise  to  admit 
an  error  or  make  retraction.  In  the  case  of 
these  latter  papers,  neither  in  the  editorial 
columns  nor  in  the  news  columns  was  any 
notice  ever  given  to  the  fact  that  the  original 
criticism  had  been  retracted  by  the  very  men 
who  had  made  it. 

What  I  have  said  regarding  the  caution 
necessary  in  trusting  to  the  daily  press 
because  of  the  extent  to  which  information 
is  colored  by  the  policy  of  the  newspaper 
management  is  equally  true  of  the  periodical 
press  and  the  leading  weeklies.  In  such 
publications  there  is  practically  no  attempt 
to  give  the  daily  news  as  a  correspondent  of 
the  Associated  Press  would  give  it.  The 
articles  are  ordinarily  written  for  a  purpose 
and  represent  merely  the  point  of  view  of  the 
individual  writer,  or  the  recognized  point  of 
view  of  the  particular  periodical.    There  are 


26    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

many  hack  writers  for  periodicals  of  this 
nature  who  know  what  kind  of  material  is 
acceptable  to  any  particular  publication,  and 
are  ready  to  present  information  adapted  to 
any  particular  taste.  Some  of  these  writers 
can  be  well  compared  to  what  is  known 
as  a  "converter"  in  the  cotton  trade.  A 
"converter"  is  a  man  who  buys  goods  in 
the  "grey,"  which  means  goods  woven  from 
uncolored  yarns.  He  then,  by  contract,  has 
these  goods  "converted"  through  any  of  the 
processes  of  coloring,  printing,  or  finishing 
of  any  kind  to  suit  the  taste  of  the  customer. 
Much  of  the  information  which  comes  to  the 
public  through  our  modern  periodicals  is  of 
this  nature.  The  raw  facts  are  turned  out 
by  such  factories  as  the  government  bureaus, 
committee  hearings,  and  so  forth,  and  these 
are  then  artistically  "converted"  into  such 
fancy  products  (or  perhaps  I  should  say 
fanciful  products)  as  the  purchaser  may 
desire. 

The  conclusion  from  this  is  that  the  duty 
of  the  voter  is  to  carefully  scrutinize  the 
news  as  he  reads  it,  with  the  object  of  dis- 
tinguishing so  far  as  possible  between  the 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  FACTS   27 

plain,  unvarnished  tale  of  the  correspondent 
and  the  particular  bias  given  to  such  a  recital 
by  the  individual  publication.  I  do  not  mean 
for  a  moment  to  say  that  the  work  of  the 
editor  is  not  of  the  utmost  importance,  or 
that  the  reader  should  not  give  due  weight 
to  the  particular  presentation  of  the  facts 
of  any  journal  which  he  trusts.  What  he 
should  do,  however,  is  carefully  to  recognize 
how  far  any  particular  journal  stands  for  a 
particular  policy,  what  its  special  fads  are, 
and  on  what  subjects  it  is  likely  to  speak 
with  some  peculiar  prejudice.  For  this 
purpose  it  is  important  to  read  several 
papers  at  the  same  time.  I  do  not  mean 
merely  to  read  the  conflicting  editorials  on 
any  particular  point,  but  to  read  and  com- 
pare carefully  the  news  items  themselves  as 
presented  in  different  papers.  Where  the 
presentation  of  the  facts  is  identical  in  sev- 
eral papers  of  different  political  complexion 
it  is  usually  safe  to  accept  the  news  as  accu- 
rate. But  frequently  it  will  be  found  that 
what  is  supposed  to  be  the  same  occurrence 
will  be  differently  reported  by  different 
papers  and  that  the  statement  of  no  one 


28    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

should  be  accepted  without  fair  comparison 
with  the  others. 

It  is  impossible  to  direct  you  in  any  formal 
way  to  sources  of  information  on  most 
public  questions,  outside  of  current  publi- 
cations. There  are  in  many  cases  elaborate 
reports  published  by  different  bodies,  arti- 
cles and  books  by  trained  investigators, 
carefully  prepared  speeches  of  leading 
public  men,  hearings  of  committees,  and  the 
like.  But  these  vary  so  much  in  value  that 
it  is  almost  impossible  for  the  average  citi- 
zen to  know  how  much  confidence  to  place 
in  any  one.  One  of  the  things  most  needed 
is  a  kind  of  clearing  house  of  information  on 
matters  of  public  policy.  An  organization 
which  could  justly  secure  the  confidence  of 
the  public  in  the  way  of  collecting,  digesting, 
and  presenting  impartially  for  public  use  the 
results  of  the  best  inquiries  into  such  matters 
in  different  states  and  countries  would  be  of 
the  greatest  value  to  the  general  public. 
Some  such  attempts  have  already  been  made 
in  one  or  two  states  under  an  appropriation 
from  the  legislature.  Probably  the  best 
illustration  of  this  is  the  so-called  Legisla- 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  FACTS       29 

tive  Reference  Library  of  the  State  of 
Wisconsin,  but  as  yet  such  attempts  have 
had  only  a  limited  and  local  value. 

In  many  cases  the  difficulty  of  determin- 
ing what  would  seem  to  be  a  simple  question 
of  fact  is  such  as  to  be  practically  beyond 
the  determination  of  the  most  conscientious 
voter.  Take,  for  instance,  the  attitude  of  the 
general  public  toward  such  a  measure  as  the 
Payne- Aldrich  tariff  act  of  1909.  I  am  not 
here  either  to  defend  or  to  criticise  that 
measure.  What  I  wish  to  suggest  to  you  is 
that  practically  all  of  the  statements  which 
you  have  read  either  in  defense  or  in  criti- 
cism of  it  have  been  based  on  very  partial 
information.  You  will  hear  perfectly  honest 
men  tell  you,  on  the  one  hand,  that  this  act 
was  a  revision  of  the  tariff  downward  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  equally  honest  men  tell 
you  that  it  was  a  revision  of  the  tariff  up- 
ward. It  would  seem  as  if  this  were  a  simple 
question  of  fact  which  could  be  easily  deter- 
mined and  settled  to  everybody's  satisfac- 
tion. 

I  have  heard  professors  of  economics 
speak  with  complete  confidence  regarding 


30    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

this  measure,  as  if  there  were  no  question 
about  it  whatsoever.  None  the  less  it  is  a 
question  which  has  not  been  definitely  settled 
and  which  can  never  be  settled  in  the  sense 
that  the  truth  can  be  told  about  it  in  a  single 
sentence.  There  were  some  striking  reduc- 
tions in  the  rates;  there  were  some  striking 
increases.  There  were  many  minor  changes 
in  one  direction  or  the  other.  Anyone  who 
knows  anything  about  the  subject  at  all 
knows  that  any  attempt  at  expressing  the 
change  in  terms  of  averages  is  meaningless. 
The  fact  is,  furthermore,  that,  due  to  com- 
plicated changes  in  classification,  it  is  often 
very  difficult  to  determine  whether  a  rate 
was  increased  or  decreased.  Frankly,  the 
most  conscientious  tariff  expert,  if  asked  the 
blunt  question  whether  this  act  increased  or 
decreased  duties,  would  decline  to  answer. 
If  you  ask  him  whether  the  duty  on  steel 
rails  was  increased  or  decreased  he  can  tell 
you.  If  you  ask  him  whether  it  was  in- 
creased or  decreased  on  cotton  goods  having 
a  certain  number  of  threads  to  the  square 
inch,  weighing  so  much  per  square  yard,  and 
having  a  certain  value,  he  can  tell  you.    But 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  FACTS   31 

he  would  not  venture  any  sweeping  asser- 
tion. And  yet  the  newspapers  and  periodi- 
cals have  been  filled  with  most  categorical 
assertions  regarding  this  act,  and  even  you 
young  men  may  perhaps  think  that  you  have 
a  perfectly  definite  knowledge  on  this  sub- 
ject and  are  prepared  to  speak  confidently 
in  either  accusatory  or  laudatory  terms. 

You  may  ask,  in  view  of  what  I  have  just 
said,  what  use  it  can  possibly  be  for  the  voter 
to  attempt  any  study  of  these  problems  if  it 
is  so  difficult  to  secure  positive  information. 
The  answer  is  that  your  first  duty  is  to 
recognize  how  difficult  the  problem  is.  I 
consider  the  attitude  of  the  man  who  makes 
sweeping  assertions  regarding  matters  which 
he  does  not  fully  understand  to  be  distinctly 
immoral,  as  it  is  also  distinctly  human. 

If,  then,  5^ou  recognize  the  difficulties  of 
many  of  these  questions,  the  necessity  of 
acting  conscientiously  regarding  them,  and 
yet  the  difficulty  of  equipping  yourselves  for 
an  adequate  judgment,  you  are  prepared  to 
face  the  next  problem,  which  is  that  of  the 
choice  of  the  leaders  whom  you  will  follow 
when  unable  to  decide  each  technical  detail 


32    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

for  yourselves,  or  the  organization  with 
which  you  will  affiliate  yourselves  as  best 
serving  the  public  interest  in  the  long  run. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  VOTER  AND  THE  PARTY 

In  the  previous  lecture  I  pointed  out  that 
I  considered  the  first  duty  of  the  voter  in 
matters  of  public  policy  to  be  the  securing 
of  adequate  knowledge.  I  also  tried  to  point 
out  some  of  the  difficulties  which  confront 
the  voter  in  getting  accurate  information. 
I  fear  that  I  left  you  in  a  somewhat  unsatis- 
factory state  of  mind  and  that  you  felt  from 
what  I  said  that  the  problem  of  intelligent, 
conscientious  action  is  well-nigh  insoluble 
for  even  the  educated  voter  if  he  is  obliged  to 
equip  himself  to  pass  upon  the  details  of 
every  piece  of  legislation.  Our  system  of 
government  is,  however,  on  the  one  hand  a 
system  of  representative  government  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  a  system  of  party  govern- 
ment. By  representative  government  we 
mean  that  instead  of  the  voters,  who  have 
the  ultimate  power,  directly  legislating 
according  to  their  immediate  desires,  they 
delegate  this  function  to  representatives 
whom  they  elect  by  their  votes  and  whom, 


34    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

presumably,  they  trust  to  represent  either 
their  own  interests  or  the  interests  of  the 
community  as  a  whole.  By  party  govern- 
ment we  mean  that  such  representatives  are 
divided  into  party  groups,  each  group  repre- 
senting a  particular  policy  regarding  each 
great  public  question  and  acting  as  a  co- 
herent body  to  carry  out  a  party  program. 

Since,  therefore,  under  our  present  system 
the  voter  is,  in  general,  not  called  upon  to 
vote  directly  upon  important  legislative 
measures,  his  problem  becomes  a  secondary 
one ;  namely,  that  he  shall  choose  the  proper 
representative  to  voice  his  views  or  shall 
make  the  right  choice  between  political 
parties  to  whom  is  entrusted  the  carrying  out 
of  measures  of  this  kind.  There  are  various 
problems  connected  with  the  mutual  rela- 
tions between  the  voter  and  his  representa- 
tive, the  voter  and  his  party,  and  the  repre- 
sentative and  his  party,  which  I  shall 
consider  in  succeeding  lectures.  What  I 
want  to  point  out  here  is  that  under  a  repre- 
sentative and  party  government  the  moral 
responsibility  of  the  voter  is  primarily  in  the 
intelligent  choice  of  leaders  whom  he  will 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  PARTY   35 

follow  rather  than  in  the  acquisition  of  tech- 
nical knowledge  on  each  measure  of  public 
importance.  Even  in  making  such  a  choice, 
however,  he  can  only  do  so  conscientiously  by 
having  some  intelligent  opinion  on  at  least 
the  principles  which  he  wishes  to  see  enacted 
into  legislation,  even  if  he  is  content  to  leave 
the  details  to  others.  Consequently,  he 
cannot  escape  the  moral  obligation  of  hard 
thinking  and  careful  study  to  which  I  have 
referred. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  venture  on  the 
much  discussed  problem  of  how  far  a  repre- 
sentative form  of  government  satisfactorily 
meets  the  needs  of  the  voting  population. 
There  has  been  a  strong  agitation  in  recent 
years,  as  you  know,  in  favor  of  substituting 
a  more  direct  form  of  legislation  by  the 
people.  Personally,  I  do  not  hold  an 
extreme  view  either  way  regarding  the  prob- 
lem of  the  initiative  and  the  referendum.  I 
am  decidedly  skeptical  as  to  their  accom- 
plishing any  very  good  results  in  the  long 
run,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  I  do  not  feel 
that  they  are  fraught  with  very  grave 
danger,  especially  in  the  field  of  local  and 


36    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

state  affairs.  All  I  wish  to  point  out  here 
is  the  fact  that  under  such  a  system  the 
responsibility  of  the  voter  becomes  much 
more  immediate  and  direct  and  is,  to  my 
mind,  largely  beyond  his  capacity. 

Direct  legislation  to  be  successful  must  be 
enacted  by  a  body  of  voters  who  are  not  only 
convinced  of  some  general  principle  which 
they  wish  to  see  adopted,  but  who  have  made 
the  detailed  study  necessary  to  an  under- 
standing of  the  probable  workings  of  each 
specific  measure.  The  danger  resulting 
from  ignorance  (whether  due  to  indifference 
or  to  sheer  limits  of  the  human  mind  to 
handle  an  innumerable  set  of  problems)  is 
enhanced  in  proportion  as  the  direct  act  of 
legislation  is  removed  from  a  bodv  of 
experts  whose  whole  time  and  thought  is, 
theoretically  at  least,  devoted  to  these  prob- 
lems. In  national  affairs  (and  I  am  con- 
fining most  of  my  consideration  of  this 
question  to  national  affairs)  the  system  of 
representative  and  party  government  still 
endures. 

What,  then,  is  the  duty  of  the  voter  who 
is  confronted  with  the  fact  that  it  is  impossi- 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  PARTY       37 

ble  for  him  to  master  all  the  intricacies  of 
public  policy  in  detail  ?  In  arguing  recently 
with  one  of  the  most  intelligent  students  of 
public  problems  whom  I  know,  I  was  main- 
taining that  the  first  political  duty  of  man 
is  to  secure  knowledge.  To  this  he  replied 
that  it  is  the  very  hopelessness  of  even  the 
most  conscientious  man  getting  trustworthy 
knowledge  on  most  matters  that  made  him 
feel  that  my  claim  was  practically  meaning- 
less. In  other  words,  he  held  that  to  advo- 
cate the  impossible  was  to  advocate  nothing. 
His  own  problem  for  himself,  he  said,  was 
to  make  up  his  mind  regarding  some  leader 
whom  he  could  trust  and  then  follow  him. 

I  take  it  that  he  meant  some  intellectual 
leader  rather  than  some  political  leader. 
Such  a  solution  may  frequently  work  well 
and,  of  course,  such  intellectual  leadership 
has  been  found  in  the  past.  Some  of  the 
great  newspaper  editors  have  doubtless 
exercised  such  an  influence,  and  their  readers 
have  simply  been  content,  once  having  estab- 
lished this  trust,  to  follow  them  blindly 
regarding  every  measure.  This  acceptance 
of   authority   on    faith   is    apparently   less 


38    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

common  than  a  generation  ago.  In  any 
case,  such  a  choice  is  not  likely  to  be  widely 
made  in  a  community  which  has  such  an 
historical  background  of  individualism  and 
protestantism  as  our  own. 

If,  instead  of  choosing  an  intellectual 
leader  of  this  type,  one  proposes  to  choose  a 
political  leader,  the  problem  usually  becomes 
one  of  a  choice  of  party.  Occasionally  there 
arises  in  the  political  world  a  personality 
who  can  secure  for  himself  a  following  which 
is  distinctly  personal  and  can  carry  a  large 
number  of  followers  with  him  from  one  party 
to  another  if  he  chooses,  and  from  one 
change  of  policy  to  another  no  matter  how 
rapid  these  changes  may  be.  Such  extraor- 
dinary personalities,  however,  are  not  suffi- 
ciently common  to  change  the  general  fact 
that  the  voter  in  the  long  run  does  not 
choose  one  leader,  but  a  group  of  leaders; 
and  these  are  not  individual  knights  who 
champion  nothing  but  their  own  views,  but 
rather  the  leaders  of  an  organized  political 
body  which  we  call  a  party. 

There  are  three  broad  principles  accord- 
ing to  which  political  parties  may  be  divided. 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  PARTY   39 

The  first  is  according  to  sectional  interest, 
the  second  according  to  group  or  class  inter- 
est, and  the  third  according  to  some  funda- 
mental difference  of  opinion  regarding  the 
principles  which  should  be  enacted  into  leg- 
islation for  the  presumed  welfare  of  all 
sections  and  classes.  The  sectional  interest 
has  played  a  considerable  role  in  our  past 
history  and,  of  course,  at  the  present  time  the 
complete  predominance  of  the  Democratic 
party  in  the  "solid  South"  rests  largely  on 
the  historic  grounds  of  sectional  interest 
which  culminated  in  the  Civil  War.  It  is, 
however,  partly  maintained  by  the  question 
of  a  group  interest  which  is  still  a  critical 
one ;  that  is,  the  feeling  on  the  part  of  many 
that  adherence  to  the  Democratic  party  is 
essential  to  the  dominance  of  the  white 
population.  So  far  no  party  of  real  power 
in  the  United  States  has  represented  group 
or  class  interest  in  any  such  conscious  waj^ 
as  these  interests  are  represented  by  the 
political  parties  in  Germany.  In  that  coun- 
try, for  instance,  there  is  a  party  which 
distinctly  represents  the  interest  of  the  land- 
owners, one  which  represents  the  interests 


40    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

of  the  commercial  group,  one  which  repre- 
sents the  wage-earning  group,  one  which 
represents  the  interests  of  the  Catholics,  and 
so  on.  And  to  these  are  added  certain 
smaller  parties  representing  sectional  or 
racial  interests. 

In  the  main,  I  think  it  may  be  said, 
although  it  is  frequently  difficult  to  explain 
what  the  difference  is  between  the  Republi- 
can party  and  the  Democratic  party  in  this 
country,  that  the  division  is  primarily  not 
one  resulting  from  the  clash  of  sectional  or 
group  interests,  but  is  a  division  represent- 
ing certain  fundamental  differences  of 
opinion  regarding  the  proper  powers  of 
government  and  the  line  of  government 
policy  best  adapted  to  securing  the  welfare 
of  all.  That  this  is  to  be  more  the  case  in  the 
immediate  future  than  it  was  a  decade  ago 
I  shall  attempt  to  prove  later. 

Usually  in  our  history  we  have  had  only 
two  great  parties  and  most  of  the  voters  have 
made  their  choice  between  these.  Smaller 
parties  may  exist  side  by  side  with  them,  but 
usually  secure  few  adherents.  The  average 
American  wants  to  have  his  vote  count  one 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  PARTY   41 

way  or  the  other.  To  ally  himself  with  some 
small,  outside  party  is  to  make  it  impossible 
for  his  candidates  to  come  into  power  or 
carry  through  their  policies.  In  general  it 
is  the  idealist  and  the  enthusiast  only  who  is 
willing  to  take  action  of  this  kind.  This 
does  not  mean  at  all,  however,  that  refusal 
to  join  such  interests  as  these  shows  any  lack 
of  idealism  or  any  lack  of  conscience  on  the 
part  of  the  voter.  Here  is  one  of  the  ques- 
tions in  the  decision  of  which  the  voter  must 
search  his  conscience. 

Take,  for  example,  the  Prohibition  party. 
There  are  those  who  feel  so  strongly  that 
prohibition  of  the  use  of  alcoholic  drinks  is 
so  much  the  most  important  problem  of  the 
country  that  they  must  show  their  allegiance 
to  this  cause  by  maintaining  an  independent 
political  party  for  this  purpose.  Others, 
however,  who  feel  as  strongly  on  this  point 
and  are  as  anxious  to  secure  the  same  end, 
decide  conscientiously  that  the  restriction  of 
such  traffic  can  be  much  better  effected  by 
voting  for  one  of  the  parties  which  is  sure  to 
come  into  power  and  by  throwing  their  votes 
to  the  party  which  will  do  the  most  toward 


42    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

securing  their  ends.  The  relation  of  the 
Republican  party  in  Maine  to  the  prohibi- 
tion question  is  one  of  the  most  interesting 
illustrations  of  such  a  case. 

The  growing  socialistic  party  is  another 
case  in  point.  Its  adherents  believe  that  the 
form  of  government  which  they  believe  in 
would  never  be  adopted,  or  anything 
approaching  it,  by  one  of  the  established 
parties.  The  conscientious  conclusion  of 
the  member  of  the  socialistic  party  is  that, 
better  than  to  attempt  some  slight  conces- 
sion from  either  ruling  party,  is  to  work 
unceasingly  for  the  growth  of  a  new  party 
which  will  ultimately  dictate  terms  of  its 
own. 

These  are  problems  of  conscience  which 
you  will  doubtless  have  to  face  in  the  future. 
A  third  or  fourth  or  fifth  party  may  arise  at 
any  time,  which  may  have  no  possibility  of 
immediate  success,  but  which  may  represent 
a  cause  which  you  believe  to  be  funda- 
mentally just  and  which  you  think  may 
triumph  in  the  end  through  such  a  new 
organization.  But  two  of  you  who  believe  in 
the  same  cause  may  make  different  decisions 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  PARTY       43 

as  to  the  best  line  of  action.  To  decide  to 
work  in  harmony  with  a  powerful  organiza- 
tion to  ultimately  turn  it  toward  a  certain 
goal  is  just  as  worthy  conduct  as  to  throw 
one's  fortunes  with  what  may  seem  a  more 
idealistic  movement  by  means  of  some  new 
organization.  It  is  not  a  question  of  con- 
science. It  is  a  question  of  judgment  as  to 
the  best  means  to  the  end. 

If  you  come  to  a  choice,  as  most  voters  do, 
between  one  or  the  other  of  the  two  great 
parties,  it  is  here  that  the  educated  man,  if 
he  lives  up  to  the  moral  duty  of  considering 
problems  of  public  policy  with  care  and 
study,  ought  to  be  able  to  make  his  choice 
with  intelligence  and  a  clear  conscience. 
Having  made  such  a  choice,  he  must  then 
recognize  the  limitations  of  his  action.  It  is 
not  for  him  to  frame  an  ideal  system  of 
government  or  an  ideal  economic  policy. 
Rather,  having  once  cast  his  lot  with  that 
organization  which,  on  the  whole,  he  believes 
in,  among  the  choice  offered  to  him,  he  must 
recognize  that  now  this  very  organization 
cannot  accomplish  even  a  part  of  the  results 
which  he  desires  unless  it  is  to  have  the  loyal 


44    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

support  of  its  members.  I  know  there  are 
many  who  feel  that  there  is  something 
immoral  in  strict  party  loyalty.  Many 
people  of  the  educated  class  look  with  a 
superior  scorn  on  those  who  work  for  party 
success  year  after  year,  even  when  that  party 
follows  many  paths  from  which  they  have 
attempted  to  steer  its  feet. 

I  certainly  believe  in  the  independence  of 
the  voter,  but  T  do  not  believe  that  his  inde- 
pendence is  any  greater  if  he  jumps  indis- 
criminately from  one  party  to  the  other 
according  to  some  temporary  feeling,  or 
because  of  dissatisfaction  with  certain  indi- 
viduals. I  think  frequently  this  shows  a 
certain  lack  of  principle.  The  thoughtful 
and  conscientious  man,  from  his  training,  his 
historical  study,  his  profound  convictions 
regarding  great  lines  of  policy,  ought  not  to 
be  able  to  throw  off  a  party  as  lightly  as  he 
throws  off  an  overcoat.  If  he  can  do  this, 
what  right  had  he  conscientiously  to  belong- 
to  that  party  before  ?  It  would  indicate  that 
he  had  no  serious  convictions,  or  no  serious 
reason  for  his  previous  choice.  I  am  speak- 
ing now  of  national  politics  and  not  of  local 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  PARTY   45 

or  state  politics.  The  same  principles  apply 
to  a  certain  extent  in  the  case  of  state  politics 
and  to  a  less  extent  or  very  slightly  in  the 
matter  of  municipal  elections.  For  this 
reason  I  think  it  of  the  utmost  benefit  that 
state  and  local  elections  should  not  be  held 
at  the  same  time  with  the  elections  of  a 
President  or  a  Congress. 

I  think  some  of  the  best  men  in  the  world 
and  the  men  who  are  striving  hardest  to 
secure  improvement  in  public  affairs  waste 
their  efforts  by  holding  up  independence  as 
a  fetish  to  be  worshiped.  The  futility  of 
many  of  these  efforts  for  reform  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  reform  leaders  are  too  often  unwill- 
ing to  use  the  tools  at  their  hands  and  to 
recognize  the  fact  that  political  parties  are 
and  must  be  coherent,  dynamic  organiza- 
tions. Many  a  man  is  more  conscientiously 
loyal  to  some  ideal  who  refuses  to  lend  his 
support  to  the  breakdown  of  an  efficient 
organization  than  he  who  appears  before  the 
public  as  a  champion  of  the  very  principle 
in  which  both  believe. 

Even  at  the  risk  of  telling  too  many 
stories  I  venture  to  illustrate  some  of  the 


46    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

above  ideas  b}r  two  instances  of  my  own 
experience. 

I  was  formerly  connected  with  a  working- 
men's  organization  which  used  to  meet  once 
a  week  for  discussion  of  public  affairs.  The 
club  included  a  large  variety  of  working- 
men,  from  janitors  to  skilled  mechanics,  and 
it  also  included  men  of  a  variety  of  party 
and  political  interests.  Among  them  one  of 
the  most  intelligent,  and  one  of  the  most 
skilled  workers,  was  an  earnest  socialist. 

We  were  invited  as  a  club  to  send  repre- 
sentatives to  a  special  meeting  to  which  dele- 
gates had  been  invited  from  a  large  number 
of  different  civic  organizations  for  the  pur- 
pose of  forming  some  kind  of  federation  for 
the  advancement  of  the  welfare  of  the  com- 
munity and  general  civic  betterment.  I  read 
the  invitation  at  one  meeting  and  moved  that 
a  delegation  of  three  should  be  appointed. 
The  club  was  pleased  to  be  recognized  in 
such  a  movement  and  the  vote  was  about  to 
go  through  without  contest  when  the  social- 
ist member  arose  and  said  that  he  would  like 
to  know  more  about  it  before  voting  in  favor 
of  the  proposition.    I  saw  at  once  that  he  was 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  PARTY   47 

suspicious  that  there  was  some  especial 
interest  in  the  matter  for  a  particular  move- 
ment, and  he  was  disinclined  to  give  his  sup- 
port to  anything  that  would  not  support  the 
policies  which  he  favored.  I  attempted  to 
allay  his  fears  by  explaining  that  this  was  to 
be  a  general  organization  for  civic  better- 
ment only,  and  that  it  had  nothing  to  do  with 
any  particular  party  or  any  particular  sect 
in  the  community ;  that  it  was  simply  a  move- 
ment on  the  part  of  public-spirited  citizens 
to  get  an  organization  which  should  stand 
for  the  best  public  welfare.  I  assured  him 
and  the  others  that  there  was  no  trick  in  it 
and  that  there  was  no  reason  why  all  parties 
should  not  join  in  it — Republicans  and 
Democrats,  Socialists  and  Prohibitionists, 
Catholics  and  Protestants,  Jews  and 
Gentiles. 

Such  an  idea  seemed  to  appeal  to  the 
others,  but  my  socialist  friend  was  promptly 
on  his  feet  and,  although  remarking  politely 
that  he  did  not  wish  to  oppose  the  wishes  of 
"the  professor"  (which  he  always  called  me 
with  a  somewhat  pleasant  humor,  in  view  of 
the  fact,  I  think,  that  he  was  quite  skeptical 


48    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

as  to  my  knowledge  concerning  public 
affairs),  said  that  he  nevertheless  must  say 
a  word  more  about  the  matter.  Just  such  an 
organization,  he  said,  was  what  he  thought 
we  ought  to  oppose.  There  was  too  much 
general  agitation  of  this  nature.  "The  diffi- 
culty with  us  is,"  he  said,  "that  in  these  days 
we  are  always  having  fine  meetings  for 
speeches  and  for  the  general  agitation  of 
some  general  good  without  any  definite 
program  at  all.  What  we  need,"  he  con- 
tinued, "is  to  stop  these  'talk  fests'  and  get 
down  to  business.  They  never  accomplish 
anything.  They  simply  delude  the  public 
with  the  idea  that  something  fine  is  going  to 
be  done  and  then  nothing  comes  of  it.  The 
only  way  in  which  real  reform  is  secured  is 
for  each  man  to  stick  to  his  organization. 
I  believe  in  the  man  who  sticks  to  his 
party  and  works  through  it.  The  party 
stands  for  some  principle  and  he  can  only 
get  real  progress  by  working  for  the  success 
of  his  party  and  thereby  securing  the  success 
of  the  principle  in  which  he  believes.  His 
party  may  be  small  and  its  chance  of  victory 
hopeless  for  the  time  being,  but  if  he  works 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  PARTY   49 

for  it  and  takes  defeat  after  defeat  in  order 
to  rise  stronger  and  stronger  each  time  he 
will  ultimately  secure  the  ends  which  he  has 
at  heart.  Let  us  give  up  general  meetings  to 
which  everybody  can  come  with  a  clear  con- 
science and  stick  to  those  meetings  which 
represent  a  definite,  clear-cut  program 
adopted  by  a  definite  party,  to  be  worked 
out  by  a  vigorous  and  coherent  party 
organization." 

I  was  much  impressed  by  what  he  said 
because  he  voiced  feelings  which  I  had  felt 
somewhat  strongly  myself.  Nevertheless, 
feeling  that  under  the  circumstances  we 
ought  to  show  our  interest  in  such  a  move- 
ment, I  got  up  to  reply,  the  audience  being 
much  interested  to  see  what  answer  I  could 
make.  I  confess  that  I  was  somewhat  put 
to  it  at  first,  and  for  a  few  minutes  had  to 
tread  water  before  I  could  find  what  I 
thought  would  be  a  proper  answer  to  so 
vigorous  a  statement  of  his  position.  It 
suddenly  came  over  me  that  I  had  the  right 
idea  and  I  launched  out  with  some  confi- 
dence and,  I  confess,  with  some  self-flattery 
as  I  waxed  more  and  more  eloquent  (in  my 


50    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

own  mind  at  least),  and  saw  that  the 
sympathy  of  the  audience  was  getting  more 
and  more  with  me. 

My  point  was  that  I  agreed  with  him  so 
far  as  a  fighting  propaganda  was  concerned ; 
that  I  agreed  with  him  that  battles  were  won, 
not  by  bands  of  music,  but  by  bayonets  and 
bullets.  On  the  other  hand,  I  pointed  out, 
experience  shows  that  there  are  emergencies 
in  actual  warfare  when  the  band  plays  a  very 
important  part.  It  is  not  only  an  ornament 
and  amusement  in  time  of  peace,  but  a  real 
means  of  inspiring  hope  and  courage  for  the 
battle  and,  with  what  I  thought  was  a  fine 
burst,  I  pointed  out  how,  when  men  are  dis- 
heartened and  discouraged  and  about  ready 
to  give  up  in  despair  the  band  plays  some 
inspiring  air,  new  life  is  injected  into  the  dis- 
heartened forces,  the  final  charge  is  made 
and  the  day  is  won. 

I  then  went  on  to  say  that  that  was  what 
this  new  movement  was  for ;  that  we  were  to 
get  together  and  arouse  enthusiasm  and 
inspire  confidence  and  hope  and  then,  despite 
difference  of  opinion,  we  were  all  to  go  out 
and    work   with    such    organization    as    we 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  PARTY   51 

believed  in  toward  the  common  end  of  civic 
improvement,  but  that  I  agreed  with  him 
that  it  was  through  fighting  organizations 
more  coherent  and  better  organized  that  the 
actual  achievements  were  to  be  won.  I  sat 
down  feeling  that  I  had  got  out  of  a  rather 
critical  difficulty  and  much  pleased  with  the 
applause  that  was  given  me. 

In  a  moment,  however,  my  socialist  friend 
was  again  on  his  feet  with  a  twinkle  in  his 
eye  which  foreboded  that  there  was  trouble 
ahead  for  me.  "Again,"  he  said,  "I  don't 
want  to  interfere  with  the  professor  and  I 
am  perfectly  willing  to  vote  for  this  proposi- 
tion, but  I  must  ask  him  just  one  question 
about  that  band."  The  moment  he  said  that 
I  felt  my  position  was  lost.  He  went  on  to 
say  that  he  knew  as  well  as  I  did  that  battles 
were  sometimes  won  by  bands  as  well  as  by 
bullets.  In  fact,  he  said,  he  knew  a  lot  more 
about  it  than  I  did  for  he  had  fought  in 
actual  battles  and  knew  what  music  some- 
times meant.  "But,"  he  went  on,  "I  want 
to  ask  the  professor  if  he  ever  knew  of  a 
battle  being  won  by  a  band  that  played  all 
the  national  airs  at  once ;  if  he  ever  knew  of 


52    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

a  band  that  amounted  to  anything  playing 
'God  Save  the  King,'  'The  Watch  on  the 
Rhine,'  'The  Marseillaise,'  and  'Hail  Colum- 
bia' one  after  the  other.  No,"  he  said, 
"bands  that  win  battles  are  bands  that  play 
just  one  air  and  that  air  stands  for  a  definite 
patriotism  and  a  definite  object — a  definite 
something  to  be  saved  or  accomplished. 
That  is  the  kind  of  band  that  wins  battles. 
And  then,"  he  continued,  "when  such  a  band 
stops  playing  does  the  colonel  turn  to  the 
men  and  say,  'Now  everybody  run  wherever 
he  pleases'  ?  Not  a  bit.  He  tells  them  to  go 
to  one  point  and  take  one  battery,  and  that 
is  the  kind  of  charge  that  wins  real  victory." 
You  see  my  socialist  friend  was  putting 
in  very  graphic  form  what  I  have  said  above 
regarding  the  importance  of  knowing  to 
what  organization  one  belongs,  knowing 
why  one  belongs  to  it,  and  supporting  it 
loyally.  I  do  not  wish  for  a  moment  to 
minimize  the  excellent  motives  of  men  who 
take  the  other  stand,  or  the  excellent  service 
which  they  frequently  do.  I  am  only  sug- 
gesting that  it  is  quite  possible  that  in  their 
general  kind  of  enthusiasm,  in  their  genuine 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  PARTY   53 

but  somewhat  vague  yearning  for  public 
welfare,  they  will  forget  the  importance  of 
those  organizations  which  are  more  lasting 
because  held  together  by  a  much  closer  tie. 

I  know  that  many  will  say  that  the 
analogy  is  utterly  beside  the  mark ;  that  it  is 
just  because  political  parties  are  regardless 
of  the  common  welfare  and  are  only  looking 
out  for  their  own  particular  welfare  that 
complete  independence  from  them  is  the 
proper  attitude  for  all  conscientious  citi- 
zens— to  hold  one's  self  aloof  from  all  poli- 
tical organizations  and  to  maintain  inde- 
pendence above  everything  else.  I  should 
say  to  them,  however,  that  it  should  be 
remembered  that  in  every  army  there  are 
many  people  of  whom  one  cannot  personally 
approve,  there  are  frequently  leaders  who 
are  inspired  by  personal  advantage  in  the 
way  of  glory  or  otherwise,  but  that  armies  in 
which  loyalty  to  the  organization  is  not  fun- 
damental are  seldom  successful.  One  is 
reminded  of  Macaulay's  phrase — or  was  it 
Bagehot's? — that  many  battles  have  been 
won  by  a  bad  general,  but  that  none  has  ever 
been  won  by  a  good  debating  society. 


54    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

It  is  also  true  that  there  have  been  in  the 
past  military  organizations  that  did  not 
stand  for  any  high  patriotic  purpose,  or  for 
any  common  cause  except  personal  plunder 
and  aggrandizement.  But  the  way  to  meet 
such  organizations,  whether  in  the  past  or 
today,  would  seem  to  be  to  form  some  other 
organization  equally  coherent  and  well- 
organized,  but  standing  for  some  higher 
purpose.  In  other  words,  when  a  man  be- 
comes convinced  that  any  one  particular 
party  or  any  two  parties  do  not  in  their 
essence  and  at  their  best  stand  for  any  policy 
which  makes  for  the  public  good,  the  ques- 
tion is  whether  the  best  answer  is  not  to 
organize  a  new  political  party  and  fight  the 
old  ones  with  a  higher  purpose  but  with 
the  same  recognition  of  the  power  of 
organization. 

Please  understand  that  I  am  not  making 
these  assertions  as  positive  statements  of  the 
one  method  to  be  pursued.  I  am  presenting 
the  problem  to  you  for  your  consideration. 
If  you  were  men  of  a  somewhat  different 
class  in  society  or  of  somewhat  different 
character,  I  might  emphasize  the  importance 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  PARTY   55 

of  the  other  point  of  view.  As  I  have 
already  said,  I  believe  that  the  men  who  are 
afraid  of  all  party  allegiance  frequently  do 
much  good,  but  I  believe  it  is  exactly  the 
college  men  who  over-emphasize  the  value 
of  this  freedom  and  fail  largely  to  appreciate 
the  value  of  organization.  It  is  because  I 
think  you  are  more  likely  to  make  the  error 
in  that  direction  that  I  am  perhaps  speaking 
somewhat  excessively  on  the  other  side.  In 
anv  case  you  will  have  to  make  vour  choice, 
and  the  choice  can  be  made  honestly  and  con- 
scientiously either  way. 

Here  again  is  just  the  difficulty  of  which 
I  spoke  before.  It  would  be  easy  to  choose 
if  one  only  really  knew  what  were  the  best. 
One's  decision  will  probably  be  largely  a 
matter  of  temperament,  but  at  least  you 
should  recognize  that  it  is  a  real  problem, 
that  men  can  differ  in  their  opinions  about  it, 
and  that  because  another  man  chooses  dif- 
ferently from  you  it  does  not  mean  neces- 
sarily that  he  has  a  lower  standard  of  morals 
or  a  lower  degree  of  intelligence. 

Just  one  other  story  to  illustrate  what 
seems  to  me  the  danger  of  futile  action  on 


56    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

the  part  of  well-meaning  men  who  consider 
that  their  conduct  is  more  moral  than  if  they 
acted  otherwise.  I  was  invited  once  to  a 
small  meeting  of  representatives  from  two 
different  and  worthy  organizations,  both 
working  for  the  public  good  within  the  com- 
munity and  in  certain  matters  having  much 
the  same  objects  in  view. 

They  were  both  large  and  powerful 
organizations  and  each  maintained  a  com- 
mittee regarding  this  or  that  matter  of  public 
improvement,  each  of  which  acted  independ- 
ently from  the  other,  made  its  own  investi- 
gations, its  own  recommendations,  and 
carried  on  its  own  campaign.  It  was 
thought  by  the  head  of  one  of  these  organi- 
zations that  it  was  very  desirable  for  the  two 
to  come  together  and  stop  such  duplication 
of  work.  It  happened,  however,  that  the 
president  of  one  of  these  organizations,  who 
was  one  of  the  delegates  at  the  meeting,  was 
the  local  boss  of  one  of  the  political  parties. 
This  particular  organization  which  he  repre- 
sented was  non-partisan  and  his  position  as 
political  boss  had  nothing  to  do  with  his  rela- 
tion to  it.    The  representatives  of  the  other 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  PARTY   57 

organization  were  less  of  the  business  type, 
but  men  of  the  highest  scholarly  and  social 
standing,  and  no  more  earnest  and  con- 
scientious men  could  be  found  in  matters 
relating  to  the  public  good. 

After  much  discussion  it  became  evident 
that  they  were  not  willing  to  meet 
approaches  from  the  other  side,  or  to  give  up 
their  independence  in  any  way,  and  that  the 
negotiations  were  very  sure  to  be  a  failure. 
The  politician  of  whom  I  speak  saw  the 
position  very  soon  and  said  frankly  that  he 
realized  that  the  difficulty  was  that  they 
were  suspicious  of  him  because  he  was  a  poli- 
tician and  he  knew  that  they  felt  that  a  boss 
was  a  dangerous  man  to  deal  with;  that 
somehow  he  would  turn  the  organization  to 
his  own  purposes.  Now  I  am  not  saying 
here  who  was  right  in  this  case.  Possibly 
this  was  a  case  where  independence  was 
essential  and  where  it  was  dangerous  to  come 
to  any  mutual  agreement.  I  only  suggest 
that  this  unwillingness  on  the  part  of  the 
reformer  to  deal  with  a  certain  type  of  man 
is  as  likely  to  appear  where  the  intentions  of 
the  politician  are  really  completely  disinter- 


58    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

ested  so  far  as  the  matter  in  hand  is  con- 
cerned as  would  be  the  case  where  he  had 
some  particular  axe  of  his  own  to  grind. 
There  is  such  a  prejudice  among  certain 
classes  regarding  political  organizations  and 
politicians  that  many  a  group  of  worthy 
citizens  would  simply  instinctively  react  in 
such  a  case  and  refuse  to  have  any  dealings 
under  such  circumstances. 

But  the  answer  the  politician  made  was 
this:  "I  may  be  a  boss,  but  that  is  my  own 
business.  I  have  never  asked  for  any  office 
and  if  I  like  to  run  politics  and  control  a 
political  organization  I  consider  that  a  per- 
fectly honorable  object.  In  any  case,"  he 
said,  "I  do  not  care  to  discuss  that  proposi- 
tion further."  He  claimed  that  in  these 
particular  matters,  which  had  to  do  with  the 
health  and  welfare  of  the  town,  that,  regard- 
less of  his  political  affiliations  and  merely  as 
a  citizen,  he  was  as  anxious  to  have  the  thing 
"done  right"  as  anybody  else.  "And  now," 
he  said,  "the  proposition  is  this.  You  men, 
I  recognize,  know  more  about  these  things 
than  I  do.  You  are  better  educated,  you 
have  traveled  more,  you  have  better  facili- 


THE  VOTER  AND  THE  PARTY   59 

ties.  But,"  he  said,  "it  won't  do  you  the 
slightest  good  to  get  together  and  talk  these 
matters  over.  If  you  are  going  to  accom- 
plish your  purpose  you  must  get  action,  and 
action  must  be  taken  by  the  government. 
Now,  do  you  want  action,  or  do  you  want 
independence  in  talk?  If  you  want  the 
latter,  go  on  talking  for  twenty  years  and 
satisfy  yourselves  and  I  won't  bother  you, 
But,"  he  continued,  "I  am  the  fellow  who 
can  get  things  done.  If  you  will  agree  to 
figure  out  what  ought  to  be  done  I  will  take 
care  of  the  men  who  cast  the  vote,  who  never 
would  understand  you,  and  between  us  we 
will  get  both  intelligence  and  action."  And 
with  that  he  left  the  conference  and  he  also 
left  the  conferees  entirely  unconvinced. 

Here  again,  you  see,  were  two  concrete 
moral  problems;  first,  what  are  the  best 
methods  to  get  immediate  and  concrete 
results;  second,  what  are  the  far-reaching 
effects  which  may  result  from  a  conclusion 
to  use  the  best  means  at  hand.  These  prob- 
lems will  meet  you  constantly  in  the  future, 
and  again  I  remind  you  that  it  is  not  simply 
an  easy  question  as  to  what  is  right  and  what 


60    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

is  wrong.  They  are  questions  for  the  most 
careful  consideration,  on  which  men  of  equal 
integrity  can  differ  strongly.  I  only  suggest 
again  that  the  danger  to  men  of  your  type 
is  likely  to  be  that  you  will  act  really  im- 
morally when  you  think  you  are  acting 
morally;  that  sometimes  when  you  feel  a 
spiritual  fervor  because  of  your  independ- 
ence and  the  complete  cleanness  of  your 
skirts  you  may  really  have  committed  the 
immoral  action  of  blocking  some  genuine 
good  through  some  petty  pride  in  not  being 
willing  to  use  any  tools  except  those  of  your 
own  framing  or  of  your  own  choice. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  VOTER  AND  HIS  REPRE- 
SENTATIVE 

The  question  which  I  wish  to  take  up  with 
you  today  is  the  duty  of  the  voter  regarding 
the  choice  of  his  representatives  and  espe- 
cially his  particular  representative  in  Con- 
gress. I  frequently  hear  it  said  by  men  who 
take  great  interest  in  public  affairs  and 
study  the  records  of  candidates  with  care 
that  they  always  vote  for  the  "best  man," 
regardless  of  party.  This  sounds  very 
sensible  from  one  point  of  view  and  also 
seems  to  show  a  fine  independence  of  dicta- 
tion from  any  organization.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  has  been  maintained  by  many  lead- 
ing moral  thinkers  for  many  years  that  the 
fundamental  principle  in  the  case  of  popular 
government  is  the  principle  of  "measures, 
not  men."  You  see,  it  is  very  easy  to  get 
two  well-sounding  phrases,  each  of  which 
seems  to  illustrate  a  moral  principle  to  be 


62    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

followed  and  each  of  which  is  opposed  to  the 
other. 

I  find  personally  among  my  acquaint- 
ances that  there  are  many  who  are  interested 
in  legislative  measures  and  pay  a  good  deal 
of  attention  to  their  consideration  and  yet 
who,  when  they  come  to  make  up  their 
ballots,  seem  to  think  only  of  the  relative 
merits  of  the  individual  men  who  are  candi- 
dates, and  to  give  little  thought  to  the  more 
far-reaching  problem  of  the  ultimate  effect 
of  their  vote. 

In  an  address  to  his  constituents  at  Edin- 
burgh the  astute  Macaulay  discusses  the 
question  of  measures  versus  men  in  a  very 
interesting  way.  He  quotes  with  approval 
the  principle  of  politics  that  support  should 
be  given  to  measures,  not  men,  but  then  goes 
on  to  consider  cases  in  which  one  must  also 
consider  the  problem  of  personality  as  well. 
His  particular  point,  as  I  recall  it,  has  to  do 
with  the  question  of  the  way  in  which  laws 
will  be  administered  by  one  group  of  men  as 
compared  with  another  group.  This  is,  of 
course,  important.  The  enforcement  of  legis- 
lation is  as  important  as  its  enactment.    To 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  63 

vote  at  one  and  the  same  time  in  favor  of  a 

4 

certain  legislative  policy  and  for  a  group  of 
men  who  will  not  enforce  the  very  policy 
advocated  is  practically  to  nullify  the  first 
vote  altogether.  He  points  out  that  under 
a  certain  group  of  administrators  a  bad  law 
may  be  handled  in  such  a  way  as  to  do  no 
harm,  whereas  a  law  which  seems  admirable 
on  its  face  and  has  been  most  carefully 
framed  may  be  treated  in  such  a  way  as  to 
fail  entirely  in  its  results.  Such  occasions 
may  perhaps  arise,  but  I  am  not  concerned 
with  that  particular  problem  at  the  moment. 
In  general  we  may  take  it  for  granted  that 
measures  and  men  go  together;  that  men 
who  stand  for  certain  measures  will  enforce 
them  as  well  as  enact  them.  Under  such 
circumstances,  if  one  is  dealing  with  broad 
public  policies  affecting  the  general  welfare, 
the  only  way  in  which  to  secure  the  adoption 
of  one's  own  particular  policy,  or  the  nearest 
approach  to  it  possible,  is  to  vote  for  the  men 
who  stand  for  that  policy.  You  may  take 
this  to  mean  that  I  advocate  complete  party 
regularity  and  hold  that  the  voter  has  no 
need  even  to  scrutinize  his  ballot,  but  simply 


v 


64    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

to  mark  the  party  of  his  choice.  Let  me  try- 
to  explain  to  what  extent  I  think  independ- 
ence regarding  individual  candidates  can  go 
together  with  the  conscientious  belief  in  the 
support  of  measures  rather  than  men. 

In  the  case  of  local  administration,  for 
instance,  party  measures  are  by  no  means 
so  paramount  as  in  national  affairs.  There 
is  likely  to  be  much  less  holding  to  strict 
party  lines  in  a  board  of  aldermen  than  in 
Congress.  In  municipal  elections  also  the 
question  is  frequently  not  so  much  a  question 
of  some  policy  of  party  government  as  the 
mere  honest  and  efficient  administration  of 
municipal  affairs.  For  a  large  part  of  these 
affairs  the  question  of  party  allegiance  is  as 
little  important  as  it  would  be  in  the  choice  of 
the  officials  of  a  corporation.  The  result  is 
that  the  principle  of  men  rather  than  meas- 
ures, I  think,  applies  primarily  here. 

This  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  it  is  so 
important  to  separate  local  elections  from 
national  elections  in  order  that  the  voter  may 
make  his  choice  independently  in  the  two 
cases.  Possibly  some  cases  may  arise  in 
which  important  problems  of  local  policy  of 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  65 

a  ffeneral  nature  are  involved  on  which  the 
parties  take  opposite  sides  with  definite  and 
clear-cut  programs.  In  such  cases,  where 
the  voter  considers  this  question  of  policy  to 
be  the  important  feature  of  the  election,  his 
choice  must  be  for  the  man  who  supports  the 
measure  without  much  regard  for  his  other 
qualifications,  but,  as  I  have  already  said,  I 
am  more  concerned  in  these  talks  with 
national  affairs  than  with  local  or  state 
affairs. 

In  the  case  of  state  elections  the  situation 
is  more  or  less  half  way  between  that  of 
municipal  elections  and  that  of  national  elec- 
tions, and  the  voter  must  choose  his  ticket 
with  unusual  care.  Where  the  important 
questions  involved  are  questions  of  mere 
administration  the  municipal  rule  would 
hold;-  Where  there  are  questions  of  state 
policy  the  conscientious  voter  would,  how- 
ever, in  many  cases  elect  a  man  whom  he 
considered  inferior  in  capacity,  or  even  in 
conscientious  devotion  to  public  duty,  if  he 
is  sure  of  his  vote  on  a  particular  issue.  It 
is  true  that  in  state  affairs  again  the  party 
regularity  of  the  legislator  is  not  so  com- 


66    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

pelling  as  in  national  affairs,  and  one  might 
in  some  cases  feel  that  the  best  legislation 
would  be  secured  by  electing  the  best  man. 
Nevertheless,  the  situation  varies  from  state 
to  state  and  in  many  states  party  organiza- 
tion in  state  affairs  is  still  very  rigid  and 
questions  of  state  policy,  some  of  them  of  the 
utmost  importance,  are  determined  very 
largely  by  party  votes. 

The  voter  must  also  remember  that  fre- 
quently the  seemingly  high-minded  legisla- 
tor who  talks  about  what  he  will  do  when  he 
gets  to  the  legislature  actually  and  of  neces- 
sity is  there  coerced  in  a  case  of  emergency 
to  stand  by  the  party  in  all  questions  of 
party  measures,  and  it  by  no  means  follows 
that  the  voter  will  secure  the  results  which 
he  desires  by  voting  for  the  candidate  whom 
he  considers  the  ideal  man.  It  should  be 
remembered  that  a  legislature  must  be  some- 
thing more  than  a  collection  of  model  citi- 
zens. It  must  be  a  collection  of  men  with 
views,  men  witli  a  program  which  they 
intend  to  carry  through.  The  problem  here, 
as  in  national  affairs,  is  more  a  problem  as  to 
what  one  thinks  of  the  leaders  of  a  given 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  67 

party  than  of  what  one  thinks  of  the  rank 
and  file. 

The  result  is  that  the  choice  is  often  a  very 
difficult  one  for  a  conscientious  man  who 
must  frequently  vote  for  a  man  of  whom  he 
does  not  personally  approve  simply  because 
he  does  approve  of  the  leader  whom  this 
particular  candidate  will  obey.  I  very  fre- 
quently hear  men  say  that,  in  making  up 
their  ballots  for  an  election  where,  for 
instance,  there  are  two  representatives  from 
the  same  district,  they  have  voted  for  one 
Republican  and  one  Democrat,  and  speak 
of  this  with  pride  as  showing  careful  scrutiny 
of  all  candidates  independent  of  party  and 
a  vote  absolutely  according  to  conscience. 
But  if  measures  of  real  importance,  on  which 
parties  are  divided,  are  to  come  before  such 
a  legislature,  I  can  see  no  particular  reason 
for  self-congratulation  on  the  part  of  a  man 
who  has  cast  his  vote  in  such  a  way  that  it 
will  become  absolutely  nullified  on  the  final 
result, — that  is,  in  voting  for  one  candidate 
who  will  vote  yes  on  a  particular  measure 
and  for  another  who  will  vote  no.    And  yet 


68    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

many  citizens  fail  to  recognize  that  they  may 
be  nullifying  their  action  in  such  cases. 

There  is  another  factor  in  the  case,  so  far 
as  state  and  local  elections  are  concerned, 
which  should  not  be  forgotten.  As  our 
politics  are  now  organized,  the  party  divi- 
sions are,  nominally,  at  least,  the  same  for 
local  affairs,  state  affairs,  and  national 
affairs.  This  is  both  unfortunate  and  com- 
plicating. If,  for  instance,  the  Democratic 
organization  in  a  given  city  is  closely  con- 
nected with  the  state  organization  and  that 
in  turn  with  the  national,  the  voter  must  face 
the  question  of  how  the  effect  of  his  vote  will 
be  felt  in  the  wider  field  of  national  politics. 
A  local  election  may  come  on  the  eve  of  a 
great  and  perhaps  very  doubtful  national 
election.  The  voter  may  feel  that  the  local 
"machine"  of  his  own  party  ought  to  be 
disrupted,  but  this  disruption  might  mean 
a  loss  of  party  strength  at  the  national 
election  in  which  he  whole-heartedly  sup- 
ports his  party.  If  he  votes  on  the  imme- 
diate question  of  good  local  government 
alone,  he  will  vote  against  his  own  party.  If 
he  is  primarily  concerned  with  the  success  of 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  69 

a  certain  program  in  national  affairs  he  may 
conscientiously  decide  that  for  the  moment 
the  problem  of  good  local  government  must 
be  sacrificed  to  some  more  pressing  and  far- 
reaching  issue.  In  fact,  such  problems  do 
present  themselves  continually. 

Unfortunately,  it  is  this  very  fact  which 
helps  to  maintain  an  undesirable  local 
"machine"  so  long  in  power.  Pressure  is 
constantly  brought  to  bear  on  the  best  citi- 
zens not  to  endanger  the  party  strength  in 
the  wider  field.  Just  when  this  pressure 
must  be  yielded  to,  and  when  opposed,  is  a 
question  which  needs  the  deepest  considera- 
tion. I  have  already  said  that  the  problem 
is  rendered  easier  when  local  and  national 
elections  are  held  at  different  dates.  It  will 
never  be  solved,  however,  till  we  have  differ- 
ent party  names  in  local  and  in  national 
affairs.  The  citizen  of  London,  for  instance, 
chooses  between  the  "Conservative"  and 
"Liberal"  parties  when  voting  for  Parlia- 
ment. When  voting  for  the  county  council, 
however,  he  chooses  between  the  "Moder- 
ates" and  the  "Progressives."  It  would  be 
a  great  help  to  honest  municipal  government 


70    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

in  this  country  if  the  names  Republican  and 
Democratic  should  disappear  from  local 
ballots  altogether.  This  seems  to  have  been 
accomplished  in  such  communities  as  have 
adopted  the  so-called  commission  system  of 
government,  where  there  is  presented  to  the 
voter  at  election  time  the  whole  list  of  can- 
didates for  choice,  each  standing  on  his  own 
record  regardless  of  party  affiliation. 

Coming  now  to  our  main  question  in  this 
lecture,  of  the  relation  of  the  voter  to  his 
national  representative,  I  think  we  find  that 
in  such  cases  the  problem  is  usually  far  more 
a  question  of  the  party  to  be  supported  than 
the  particular  man  to  be  elected.  It  is  true 
that  there  may  be  cases  where  it  is  absolutely 
essential  to  punish  some  individual  for 
flagrant  misconduct,  where  the  moral  issue 
as  to  what  type  of  man  a  district  will  allow 
to  represent  it  becomes  for  the  moment  more 
important  than  the  question  of  what  meas- 
ures are  likely  to  be  enacted  for  the  public 
good  or  the  public  harm,  as  the  case  may  be. 
Such  a  case,  however,  should  be  perfectly 
clear  in  the  mind  of  the  voter  and  should  not 
be  merely  a  matter  of  prejudice,  of  pique,  or 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  71 

even  a  feeling  that  a  man  is  not  of  suffi- 
ciently high  intellectual  and  moral  calibre 
to  be  a  member  of  great  influence  in  national 
councils. 

The  voter  must  recognize  the  possible  far- 
reaching  results  of  his  action ;  that  by  means 
of  a  single  congressional  vote  the  whole 
course  of  policy  may  possibly  be  changed. 
To  risk  such  a  change  of  policy  lightly  and 
without  due  consideration  is  not  truly  moral 
conduct,  even  if  it  may  seem  to  be  more 
moral  at  the  moment  to  refuse  support  to  a 
particular  individual.  Consequently,  to  ac- 
complish one's  own  desire  for  the  best  public 
welfare  a  degree  of  party  regularity  becomes 
here  more  essential  than  under  other  circum- 
stances. The  question  is,  Who  control  or 
direct  the  party?  And  the  answer  is  that 
the  party  is,  for  the  moment,  controlled  or 
directed  by  a  small  group  of  men  who  domi- 
nate it  in  legislative  affairs  and  that  the 
importance  of  the  individual  representative 
is  relatively  not  great. 

Where  you  must  search  your  minds  is 
primarily  on  the  matter  of  whether  or  not 
you  have  confidence  in  the  leaders  of  a  given 


72    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

party.  If  I  may  use  the  military  figure 
again,  it  is  a  question  of  the  choice  of  general 
rather  than  of  private.  If  you  believe  that 
for  the  success  of  your  cause  a  certain  gen- 
eral needs  all  the  support  possible,  you  would 
then  try  to  provide  a  private  to  help  fill  up 
his  ranks.  You  would  not  simply  pick  out 
the  man  you  thought  was  the  best  soldier, 
provided  the  soldier  himself  had  the  choice 
of  which  general  he  would  follow.  If  there 
were  only  one  man  available  to  send  to  vour 
general  5rou  would  send  that  man.  The 
other  man  might  be  a  better  soldier,  but  you 
would  not  accomplish  your  end  if  you  were 
to  have  him  sent  to  the  other  general. 

Take  the  case  of  the  two  parties  in  Con- 
gress. If  you  had  a  direct  vote  for  the 
leaders  for  whom  woidd  you  vote?  Would 
you  vote  for  the  three  or  four  Republican 
leaders,  or  for  the  three  or  four  Democratic 
leaders,  if  you  had  your  choice?  It  is 
curious  how  little  the  importance  of  this 
problem  is  recognized  by  many  very  intelli- 
gent people.  I  have  been  often  taken  to 
task  by  friends  for  voting  for  a  certain 
Congressman  on  the  grounds  that  the  rival 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  73 

candidate  was  a  much  abler  man  and  a  much 
"better  fellow."  I  have  explained  that  I  did 
not  cast  my  vote  for  representatives  accord- 
ing to  my  personal  judgment  of  the  two 
men,  but  that  I  cast  it  according  to  the 
policies  which  I  wanted  to  see  enacted.  Even 
then  I  have  been  accused  of  taking  a  low 
attitude  in  not  choosing  the  best  representa- 
tive judged  purely  from  the  personal  point 
of  view. 

In  the  same  way  you  have  probably  often 
heard  men  say,  "I  am  not  going  to  vote  for 
so  and  so  in  this  election.  There  is  nothing 
particularly  against  him,  but  he  is  narrow- 
minded,  partisan,  and  will  never  make  head- 
way in  Congress.  Who  cares  in  Washington 
what  he  has  to  say  on  any  question,  or  what 
influence  can  he  have?"  Well,  the  answer  is 
that  he  can  have  the  influence  of  his  vote  and 
that  is  about  all  the  influence  that  any  of 
them  have.  In  nine  cases  out  of  ten  the 
representative  has  little  to  do  but  follow  his 
leader.  More  important  than  the  slight 
glamor  which  comes  from  having  a  repre- 
sentative from  your  district  who  can  make  a 
fine    personal    impression    or    an    eloquent 


74    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

speech  is  the  need  of  having  a  man  who  will 
support  the  general  in  whom  you  believe. 

Before  going  farther,  let  me  make  two 
observations  which  I  hope  you  will  keep  in 
mind  in  connection  with  what  I  say  later  as 
well  as  now  on  this  matter  of  the  relative 
power  of  the  leaders,  and  the  relative  insig- 
nificance of  the  rank  and  file.  First,  I  do 
not  wish  to  exaggerate  the  power  of  those 
party  leaders  who  are  themselves  members 
of  the  House  of  Representatives,  although 
I  am  dealing  in  this  lecture  primarily  with 
the  voter's  relation  to  that  branch  of  Con- 
gress. The  leaders  who  direct  the  legislative 
program  of  Congress  are  frequently,  of 
course,  members  of  the  upper  House.  They 
may  also  be  entirely  outside  Congress  and  in 
fact  holding  no  office  whatsoever.  At  the 
present  time  (May,  1912),  for  instance,  the 
acknowledged  leader  of  the  Democratic 
majority  in  the  House  is  Mr.  Underwood  of 
Alabama,  but  there  are  members  of  the 
party,  who  for  the  time  being  are  private 
citizens,  whose  influence  in  determining 
party  policy,  and  even  the  direct  action  of 
the  members  of  Congress  themselves,  is  very 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  75 

great.  The  influence  of  Mr.  Bryan,  for 
example,  on  the  attitude  of  Congress  itself 
is  perhaps  as  great  as  that  of  any  leader  in 
either  House  or  Senate.  This  does  not, 
however,  alter  the  main  fact  which  I  have 
stated;  that  one's  choice  of  the  individual 
representative  must  be  determined,  not  so 
much  according  to  one's  judgment  of  the 
individual  man,  as  according  to  the  group  of 
leaders  who,  for  the  time  being,  he  is  prac- 
tically obliged  to  follow.  Furthermore,  the 
influence  of  outside  leaders  on  members  of 
Congress  will  be  in  many  cases  felt  in- 
directly through  the  leaders  of  the  floor 
itself.  This  means  either  that  the  outside 
influence  acts  directly  and  sympathetically 
on  the  leaders  on  the  floor,  or  else  that  these 
latter  are  forced  to  recognize  the  power  of 
such  outside  influence  and  to  compromise 
with  it  in  order  to  maintain  their  own  leader- 
ship. 

This  suggests  the  second  point,  which  is 
likely  to  occur  to  you.  After  all,  do  the 
leaders  determine  the  policy  of  the  party, 
or  does  the  rank  and  file  of  the  party  deter- 
mine  its    own    policy   and    dictate   to    the 


76    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

leaders?  I  have  seemed  to  imply  that  the 
former  is  the  case  rather  than  the  latter.  In 
doing  so,  however,  I  have  in  mind  short 
periods  only.  It  is  a  matter  of  mutual 
action  and  reaction  between  the  leaders  and 
the  rank  and  file,  and,  in  the  long  run,  of 
course,  it  is  with  rare  exceptions  impossible 
for  any  leader  or  group  of  leaders  to  swing 
a  whole  party  away  from  its  established 
principles.  Those  men  rise  to  leadership 
who  represent  the  long-run  opinion  of  the 
rank  and  file.  In  this  sense  the  party 
dictates  to  its  so-called  leaders. 

The  psychology  of  political  leadership  is 
peculiarly  fascinating  and  is  frequently  mis- 
understood by  those  who  look  on  every 
compromise  as  a  sign  of  weakness.  Among 
the  many  intricate  problems  of  legislation 
which  Congress  has  to  face  there  will  inevit- 
ably arise  frequently  cases  where  the 
acknowledged  party  leader  will  be  forced  to 
support  certain  measures  in  which  he  does 
not  wholly  believe,  or  to  withhold  his  sup- 
port from  measures  with  which  he  is  in 
hearty  sympathy,  simply  because  he  knows 
that  he  cannot  carry  his  party  with  him.    To 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  77 

act  otherwise,  it  seems  to  him,  is  to  endanger 
not  only  his  personal  leadership,  but  his 
ultimate  influence  for  what  he  considers  the 
national  welfare,  without  accomplishing  any- 
good  results  as  an  offset  to  such  a  sacrifice. 
I  have  often  heard  men  speak  somewhat 
sneeringly  of  such  conduct  and  assert  that  a 
man  who  recognizes  this  necessity  cannot 
really  set  up  a  claim  to  qualities  of  genuine 
leadership.  This  seems  to  me  a  mistaken 
attitude.  A  man  who  does  otherwise  cannot 
lead  in  the  field  of  politics.  The  best  swords 
are  not  those  which  are  most  rigid.  Lowell 
wrote  of  Lincoln's  mind  "bent  like  perfect 
steel  to  spring  again  and  thrust."  The 
old  saying  that  you  can  lead  a  horse  to 
water,  but  you  cannot  make  him  drink,  must 
frequently  be  paraphrased  in  the  mind  of  an 
astute  leader  to  the  effect  that  there  is  no 
use  in  leading  a  horse  to  water  if  you  cannot 
make  him  drink.  Of  course,  in  matters  of 
fundamental  principle,  or  in  the  face  of  a 
grave  crisis,  the  true  leader  will  stake  his  all 
on  the  effort  to  swing  a  reluctant  party 
toward  his  own  point  of  view;  but  many 
occasions    of   lesser   importance   will    arise 


78    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

where  he  must  recognize  the  limitation  of 
his  power  over  his  followers. 

Yon  will  see,  then,  that  I  make  very  de- 
cided limitations  to  the  proposition  that  the 
leaders  make  the  party  program.  But 
again,  it  seems  to  me  that  these  limitations 
do  not  alter  the  fact  on  which  I  have  in- 
sisted; that  in  voting  for  the  ordinary  Con- 
gressman one  should  always  recognize  that 
one  is  voting  for  a  private  who,  for  the  time 
being,  will  take  his  orders  from  the  consti- 
tuted leader.  The  fact  that  the  great  body 
of  the  voters  ultimately  determine  party 
policies,  or  that  the  rank  and  file  in  Con- 
gress itself  sets  a  limit  to  the  power  of  the 
leaders,  does  not  alter  the  fact  that  in  nine 
cases  out  of  ten  the  man  for  whom  you  vote 
will  be  forced  to  follow  a  program  which  has 
been  prescribed  with  slight  regard  to  his 
individual  point  of  view. 

Men  who  always  vote  according  to  their 
opinion  of  the  rival  candidates  do  so,  I  know, 
from  most  conscientious  motives,  but  I  also 
know  that  they  think  that  men  who  do  the 
opposite  are  hide-bound  partisans.  What  I 
am  suggesting  is  that  such  conscientiousness 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  79 

is  frequently  due  to  a  superficial  considera- 
tion of  the  ultimate  results;  that  it  is  based 
on  a  lack  of  due  knowledge  of  the  situation ; 
and  that  just  in  so  far  as  it  is  due  to  super- 
ficiality or  carelessness  it  is  not  highly  moral 
action. 

Of  course,  there  is  the  danger  of  a  still 
lower  attitude  and  yet  a  not  uncommon  one, 
especially  among  men  who  pride  themselves 
on  their  independence.  This  is  the  danger  of 
voting  for  a  man  because  you  happen  to  like 
him,  because  he  belongs  to  your  crowd, 
because  he  is  a  good  friend  and  neighbor, 
because  he  is  one  of  your  group  at  the  club, 
and  so  forth.  It  seems  almost  unnecessary 
to  point  out  the  immorality  of  such  conduct 
as  this  where  issues  of  vital  importance  are 
at  stake,  and  yet  I  have  seen  enough  of  it 
to  know  that  you  will  frequently  be  tempted 
toward  such  action  in  the  future.  I  have 
heard  one  reason  given  for  nominating  a 
certain  man  as  candidate  that  he  probably 
would  pull  a  big  vote  with  such  and  such 
an  organization,  meaning  thereby  a  social 
organization  in  which  he  was  popular. 
Unfortunately  there  is  too  much  voting  of 


80    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

this  kind,  which  I  consider  distinctly 
immoral. 

It  is  not  always  easy  to  take  the  other 
attitude.  Any  honest  voter  ought  to  be 
perfectly  willing  to  say  exactly  for  whom  he 
is  aroint  to  vote  or  for  whom  he  has  voted. 
But  if  you  are  on  intimate  terms  with  a  man 
at  vour  club  vou  mav  feel  embarrassed  to 
decline  to  give  him  your  support  as  against 
a  man  whom  you  do  not  know  at  all,  or 
perhaps  one  whom  you  consider  much  in- 
ferior in  intellect  and  character.  Of  course, 
the  politician  does  not  have  this  feeling  at  all. 
He  can  dissociate  his  friendships  from  his 
politics  with  perfect  ease.  It  is  unfortu- 
nately the  good-natured  and  well-meaning 
amateur  who  is  most  likely  to  feel  this 
pressure- — the  man  who  perhaps  in  most 
matters  has  a  higher  standard  of  morality 
than  the  average.  It  is  easy,  however,  to  use 
here  the  false  cloak  of  independence  and 
freedom  from  party  as  an  excuse  for  easy- 
going friendliness  and  good  fellowship. 

One  other  point  I  should  like  to  bring  out 
in  this  regard  is  the  relation  of  the  represen- 
tative in  Congress  to  the  President.    I  shall 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  81 

speak  later  of  the  growth  of  the  initiative  of 
the  executive  in  legislative  matters  and  its 
significance.  I  only  wish  to  mention  in  this 
connection  the  attitude  of  the  man  who,  in 
following  out  his  theory  of  independent 
voting,  casts  his  vote  for  a  President  of  one 
party  and  a  Congressman  of  the  other  party. 
I  have  found  this  to  he  a  not  uncommon 
practice,  especially  among  the  educated 
classes.  It  is  a  practice  due  to  the  theory  of 
voting  always  for  the  best  man.  You  can 
see  at  once,  however,  that  the  result  of  it  is 
for  a  man  in  large  measure  to  nullify  the 
effect  of  his  vote.  Assuming  for  the  moment 
(rather  than  to  anticipate  the  later  discus- 
sion in  detail)  that  you  expect  a  President 
to  have  a  definite  program  intended  for  the 
benefit  of  the  whole  country,  it  still  remains 
true  that  he  can  best  carry  out  his  program 
by  means  of  his  own  party.  In  such  a  case  to 
vote  for  a  Republican  President  and  a 
Democratic  Congressman  is  to  say  virtually 
to  the  President  that  you  believe  in  him  and 
in  his  policies,  but  that  you  intend  to  send  a 
man  to  Washington  who  will  assist  him  only 
grudgingly,  if  he  assists  him  at  all,  and  who 


82    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

more  probably  will  do  all  that  he  can  to 
block  the  very  program  of  which  you  have 
approved  in  your  presidential  vote.  The 
President  and  the  representative  are  both 
constituent  members  of  the  same  organized 
machinery  for  accomplishing  definite  legis- 
lative results.  Consequently,  though  it  may 
sound  like  fine  independence  to  vote  one's 
congressional  and  one's  presidential  ticket 
entirely  without  regard  to  each  other,  by 
doing  so  one  is  inevitably  lessening  the  effi- 
ciency of  this  necessary  machinery. 

Again,  do  not  understand  me  as  making  a 
too  sweeping  assertion.  I  do  not  mean  that 
such  splitting  of  the  ballot  is  never  justified. 
I  mean  it  is  only  justified  in  unusual  circum- 
stances and  after  the  most  mature  considera- 
tion. I  have  already  said  that  the  emergency 
may  arise  where  the  punishment  of  an  indi- 
vidual for  really  intolerable  conduct  becomes 
a  more  vital  issue  than  the  question  of  a 
proper  legislative  program.  The  only  thing 
I  urge  is  that  you  should  make  this  moral 
issue  perfectly  plain  to  your  own  minds. 

You  may  protest  against  what  I  have  been 
saying  on  the  ground  that  if  you  vote  for  the 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  83 

right  kind  of  Congressman  he  will  always 
vote  for  the  best  measures;  if  you  vote  for 
the  best  President  he  will  always  work  for 
the  best  measures,  so  there  will  always  be  an 
alignment  of  the  best  men  working  for  the 
best  good  of  the  country.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  things  do  not  work  that  way.  No 
matter  how  competent  a  man  you  send,  he 
cannot  be  a  wholly  independent  agent  after 
he  takes  office.  For  efficient  legislation  he 
must  become  a  part  of  the  general  machin- 
ery. Furthermore,  this  is  necessary  for 
efficient  government.  If  you  are  not  con- 
vinced either  of  the  fact  or  of  the  necessity 
of  it,  I  will  simply  ask  you  to  take  the  matter 
for  granted  for  the  moment  in  connection 
with  what  I  have  said  above  and  in  justifica- 
tion of  what  I  have  said.  I  shall  return  to 
this  matter  later  in  discussing  the  relation  of 
the  representative  to  his  party. 

So  far  in  this  general  lecture  on  the  rela- 
tion of  the  voter  to  his  representative,.  I  have 
been  discussing  the  question  of  what  should 
determine  the  voter's  action  in  the  choice  of 
representative.  Leaving  that  now,  we  come 
to  a  second  question,  namely,  what  the  rela- 


k- 


84    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 


tion  of  the  voter  should  be  toward  his  repre- 
sentative when  he  has  once  been  elected.  For 
the  moment  I  shall  go  on  the  assumption 
that  you,  as  voters,  will  expect  your  repre- 
sentative to  be  there  not  as  your  personal 
agent  to  attend  to  your  personal  affairs,  but 
as  a  thinking  legislator  to  act  according  to 
his  best  judgment  for  the  general  good.  Or, 
if  it  be  your  fate  to  be  the  representative 
rather  than  the  voter,  I  shall  assume  that  you 
act  on  this  same  general  principle. 

Such  an  assumption  as  this  is  really  not 
as  simple  as  it  may  seem  to  you.  But  that  is 
a  question  which  I  shall  postpone  to  a  later 
lecture.  Granted  for  the  moment  that  as 
you  look  forward  to  the  future  you  assume 
that  you  will  take  this  attitude,  whether  as 
voter  or  as  legislator,  I  wish  to  say  just  a 
few  words  in  closing  on  the  question,  not  of 
how  the  representative  shall  treat  his  con- 
stituent, but  how  the  constituent  shall  treat 
his  representative.  And  what  is  more,  it  is 
a  question  not  only  of  the  attitude  of  the 
constituent  toward  his  own  representative, 
but  of  the  voter  at  large  toward  representa- 
tives in  general. 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  85 

It  seems  to  me  that  one  of  the  chief  obsta- 
cles to  good  representative  government  in 
legislative  matters  is  a  somewhat  widespread 
attitude  on  the  part  of  many  people  to 
look  on  every  politician  with  suspicion.  It 
is  not  necessary  here  to  define  what  we  mean 
D3t  politician  or  whether  a  line  can  be  drawn 
between  the  politician  and  the  statesman. 
Tom  Reed's  famous  definition  is  well- 
known — "a  statesman  is_a_successful  poli- 
tician who__js_j&ead."  This  may  sound 
cynical,  but  was  the  result  of  wit  applied  to 
long  experience. 

There  is  also  a  tendency  to  grant  to  those 
who  are  distant  in  time  or  in  place  a  far 
greater  degree  of  merit  than  to  those  whom 
one  watches  in  dailv  life.  When  I  said  that 
there  is  a  tendency  to  look  on  the  politician 
with  suspicion  I  meant  by  politician  every- 
body who  has  entered  politics  as  a  career, 
whether  he  be  the  President  of  the  United 
States  or  the  representative  in  Congress  or 
the  alderman  from  the  ward.  More  speci- 
fically I  have  in  mind  anyone  holding  office 
under  the  vote  of  a  popular  electorate,  and 
I  think  that  the  statement  I  have  made  is 


86    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

true  regarding  this  suspicion  and  that  the 
fact  is  very  unfortunate.  It  leads  fre- 
quently to  a  lack  of  cordial  support  on  the 
part  of  the  public  when  such  support  is 
needed,  and  it  leads  also,  unfortunately,  to 
the  breeding  of  cynicism  on  the  part  of  the 
representatives  themselves  when,  after  con- 
scientious and  genuine  effort,  they  find  their 
motives  misinterpreted  and  a  casual  assump- 
tion prevailing  that  somehow  behind  every 
one  of  their  acts  is  some  subtle  and  mis- 
chievous intention  to  advance  some  private 
interest  at  the  expense  of  the  public  interest. 
It  sometimes  leads  to  the  driving  of  good 
men  out  of  public  life,  it  sometimes  leads  to 
the  cynical  attitude  that  if  one  is  getting  the 
credit  for  misdoing  one  may  as  well  get  the 
profit  from  it,  and  in  any  case  it  works 
seriously  against  a  sympathetic  and  harmo- 
nious action  of  the  representative  and  the 
voter  toward  accomplishing  common  ends. 

I  believe  that  educated  men  are  to  a  con- 
siderable extent  responsible  for  this,  and  are 
responsible  for  it  through  a  certain  uncon- 
scious prejudice  which  they  have  not 
thoroughly  analyzed.    Again,  I  wish  to  urge 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  87 

upon  you  that  it  is  just  this  kind  of  uncon- 
scious prejudice  on  the  part  of  the  voter, 
unsupported  by  reliable  data  in  the  way  of 
actual  facts,  which  I  consider  one  of  the 
immoral  characteristics  of  the  voting  public. 
It  is  true  that  there  are  many  people 
who  cannot  understand  why  a  man  should 
care  to  go  into  public  life  with  its  turmoil, 
its  jealousies  and  struggles,  and  from  their 
own  point  of  aloofness  they  are  inclined  to 
rank  such  men  as  of  an  inferior  moral  tone. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  is  another  class 
of  men,  very  practical,  devoted  solely  to 
money  getting,  who  cannot  understand  that 
men  can  have  other  motives  than  those  of 
material  profit.  Many  a  hardheaded  busi- 
ness man  says  of  the  politician  that  he  can 
not  adopt  such  a  business  "for  his  health." 
He  assumes  that  he  must  have  a  personal 
and  sordid  motive  in  everything  he  does. 
Here  we  have  two  opposite  extremes :  one  the 
purely  material,  who  does  not  believe  that 
anybody  can  have  a  higher  motive  than  his 
own;  the  other  the  idealistic,  spiritual  type, 
who  cannot  recognize  that  some  other  motive 


88    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

than  his  own  or  some  other  ambition  than  his 
own  can  be  free  from  a  sordid  taint. 

The  first  thing  for  you  to  recognize,  then 
(and  I  consider  it  a  positive  duty  for  you  to 
do  so),  is  that  the  desire  for  distinction 
in  political  life  is  in  itself  an  absolutely 
honorable  desire  and  may  lead  under  the 
stress  of  emergency  to  almost  the  highest 
type  of  public  service.  It  is  frequently  hard 
to  distinguish  between  pure  ambition,  the 
desire  for  personal  distinction,  and  the 
desire  to  perform  public  service.  In  the  case 
of  most  great  men  in  the  field  of  politics  the 
two  have  doubtless  been  intermingled.  I 
have  already  referred  to  what  the  stress  of 
emergency  may  do,  and  in  the  case  of  many 
a  great  man  the  early  motive  of  personal 
ambition  became,  under  such  stress,  entirely 
lost  in  the  desire  to  serve  the  common  good. 
But  if  it  be  true,  as  Milton  has  said,  that 
ambition  is  "the  last  infirmity  of  noble 
minds,"  I  think  that  few  of  us  need  be  afraid 
of  pleading  guilty  to  it.  There  are  so  many 
other  and  meaner  infirmities  to  which  we  are 
all  subject  that  as  the  world  is  now  consti- 
tuted no  one  need  feel  a  sense  of  shame  when 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  89 

someone  points  a  finger  at  him  and  charges 
him  with  ambition. 

If  we  grant,  then,  that  in  general  a  career 
of  politics  is  a  perfectly  honorable  one, — 
and  grant,  furthermore,  that  the  more  honor- 
able we  believe  it  the  more  honorable  it  is 
likely  to  become, — the  first  duty  of  the 
voter  is  to  give  credit  for  such  sense  of  honor 
to  his  own  representative  and  to  representa- 
tives in  all  cases  where  he  has  not  actual 
evidence  to  the  contrary.  In  other  words,  I 
should  say  that  it  was  a  distinct  moral  duty 
for  you  as  voters  to  credit  your  representa- 
tive with  honesty  of  motive  and  at  least  a 
reasonable  intelligence  in  the  conduct  of 
affairs.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  his  con- 
duct should  not  be  carefully  scrutinized.  On 
the  contrary,  I  believe  that  one  of  the  great- 
est moral  services,  even  if  one  of  the  most 
unpleasant  duties,  of  the  public-spirited 
citizen  is  to  watch  continuously  the  conduct 
of  public  officials  who  represent  him.  What 
I  object  to  is  that  casual  and  cynical  attitude 
of  suspicion  or  even  of  open  accusation  which 
is  so  common  without  any  basis  of  knowl- 
edge whatsoever.    I  am  afraid  that  no  body 


90    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

of  men  are  probably  so  guilty  of  it  as  the 
bodjT  of  college  graduates  who  somehow 
arrogate  to  themselves  an  intellectual  and 
moral  superiority,  when  the  first  lesson  of 
their  education  should  have  been  that  their 
opinions  should  not  be  swayed  by  unreason- 
ing suspicion  or  their  conversation  tainted 
by  unknowing  accusation. 

Now  the  above  has  been  somewhat  gen- 
eral and,  as  I  am  talking  quite  informally 
and  directly  to  you,  I  shall  put  what  I  mean 
quite  bluntly.  It  is  this ;  that  the  represent- 
atives of  the  people  in  either  branch  of  Con- 
gress are  probably  much  more  honest  and 
decidedly  less  intelligent  than  you  young 
men  think  them  to  be.  There  is  a  certain 
glamor  about  positions  of  this  kind  and  I 
have  no  doubt  that  you  exaggerate  in  your 
minds  the  capacity  of  the  average  Congress- 
man and  what  you  consider  the  great  genius 
of  the  few  leaders  who  have  made  themselves 
conspicuous.  On  the  other  hand,  just  as  you 
make  them  in  your  minds  more  than  plain 
human  beings  in  the  matter  of  intelligence, 
you  make  them  rather  less  than  plain  human 
beings  in  the  way  of  plotting,  scheming,  and 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  91 

planning.  This  is  partly  due  to  the  fact  that 
they  are  distant  from  you;  partly  due  also, 
I  suppose,  to  a  certain  tendency  of  youth  to 
exaggerate  all  qualities  whether  good  or  bad. 
I  have  heard  my  father  remark,  after  a  long 
life  of  varied  experience  with  all  classes  of 
men,  that  the  longer  he  lived  the  more  he 
came  to  trust  in  the  honesty  of  men  and  the 
less  he  came  to  trust  in  their  intelligence.  I 
believe  this  is  the  conclusion  that  most  intelli- 
gent men  will  come  to  as  time  goes  on. 

There  is  an  interesting  parallel  to  be 
drawn  regarding  the  way  in  which  we  look 
at  the  statesmen  of  foreign  countries.  They 
are  inclined  to  loom  big  through  the  haze  of 
distance.  The  story  is  told  (although  I  will 
not  vouch  for  the  truth  of  it)  that  a  well- 
known  American  citizen  of  foreign  parent- 
age once  appealed  to  Mr.  Blaine,  saying 
that  he  thought  it  was  time  for  him  to  give 
up  his  business  activities  and  devote  his 
energies  to  the  public  service,  and  that  he 
would  like  Mr.  Blaine's  advice  as  to  whether 
he  should  remain  in  this  country  and  run 
for  Congress  or  return  to  England  and 
stand  for  Parliament.    To  which  Mr.  Blaine 


92    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

is  supposed  to  have  replied:  "It  all  depends 
on  what  kind  of  a  reputation  you  want.  If 
you  want  a  reputation  for  statesmanship  in 
England  stay  here  and  go  to  Congress.  If 
you  want  a  reputation  for  statesmanship  in 
this  country  go  back  and  stand  for  Parlia- 
ment." 

One  who  reads  the  comments  of  the 
foreign  press  upon  their  own  statesmen  and 
the  statesmen  of  other  countries,  or  who 
talks  with  men  of  different  nations  on  such 
subjects,  cannot  help  being  amused  at  the 
way  in  which  each  gives  credit  to  the  states- 
men of  some  foreign  country  for  a  certain 
diabolical  cleverness.  The  German  thinks 
that  the  foreign  policy  of  England  has  been 
the  result  of  the  most  astute,  but  most? 
unscrupulous  statesmanship.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  is  inclined  to  criticise  the  ministers 
in  his  own  country  as  men  without  convic- 
tion or  foresight,  who  weakly  allow  them- 
selves to  be  trampled  on  by  the  ruthless 
statesmen  of  other  countries.  The  English- 
man, however,  is  likely  to  think  of  his  own 
leaders  as  somewhat  kindly  but  almost 
childlike  men  of  high  moral  standards,  who 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  93 

are  constantly  being  imposed  upon  by 
foreign  statesmen  of  great  shrewdness  who 
recognize  no  higher  principle  than  that 
might  makes  right. 

This  comparison  may  seem  somewhat 
far-fetched,  but  it  illustrates  pretty  well  the 
attitude  of  the  average  man,  and  especially 
the  average  young  man,  in  his  judgment  of 
the  men  who  have  been  elected  to  govern 
our  affairs.  The  older  man,  perhaps  from 
closer  acquaintance,  while  exaggerating  all 
the  qualities  of  the  politician  from  some 
other  part  of  the  country,  is  likely  to  take 
a  scornful  attitude  toward  his  own  repre- 
sentative. This,  it  seems  to  me,  is  in  many 
cases  utterly  unfair.  It  is  said  that  famil- 
iarity breeds  contempt  and  doubtless  it  is 
true  that  in  most  cases  close  familiarity 
with  any  individual  removes  much  of  the 
glamour  of  what  had  formerly  been  sup- 
posed to  be  his  great  superiority.  But  if 
familiarity  breeds  contempt  it  also  usually 
breeds  affection  and  good  feeling.  It  is  true 
that  when  you  come  to  know  a  man  whom 
you  thought  was  great  you  begin  to  doubt 
his  greatness.    It  is  also  true  that  when  you 


94    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

come  to  know  well  a  man  whom  you  thought 
was  a  scoundrel  you  begin  to  doubt  his 
rascality. 

I  think  that  the  politician  often  does  not 
get  a  fair  show  from  his  constituency  in  this 
matter.  They  come  too  often  to  doubt  his 
ability  without  coming  to  give  him  due  credit 
for  his  honesty.  I  repeat  in  conclusion  what 
I  said  to  start  with,  that  the  duty  of  the  voter 
is  to  recognize  his  representative  as  an 
ordinary  human  being  trying  to  do  his  best, 
not  a  master  of  deep-laid  plots  and  probably 
not  a  great  master  of  intellect  from  whom  a 
solution  of  all  problems  can  be  expected,  or 
still  less  from  whom  he  can  properly  expect 
a  vote  more  intelligent  or  a  stand  more 
courageous  than  he  could  expect  from  him- 
self when  placed  in  the  same  position.  In 
fact,  I  think  the  enthusiastic  reformer  who 
is  frequently  disgusted  with  his  representa- 
tive might  be  reminded  of  the  perhaps  vulgar 
but  very  human  advice  to  the  young  soldier 
in  Kipling's  poem: 

When  half  of  your  bullets  fly  wide  in  the  ditch, 
Don't  call  your  Martini  a  cross-eyed  old  bitch, — 
She's  human,  as  you  are, — you  treat  her  as  sich, 
And  she'll  fight  for  the  young  British  soldier ! 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  95 

There  is  one  third  and  last  point  regard- 
ing the  duty  of  the  voter  to  his  representa- 
tive which  I  can  make  very  briefly.  The 
voter  in  the  average  district  does  not  have 
the  chance  to  vote  for  a  great  party  leader. 
He  can  only  vote  for  one  of  the  subordinates. 
To  be  sure  such  a  subordinate  frequently 
starts  out  with  dreams  of  immediate  and 
brilliant  success  in  forcing  himself  into  the 
upper  councils  of  his  party  through  sheer 
force  of  ability  and  eloquence.  Similarly  his 
enthusiastic  supporters  expect  great  things 
of  him.  But  if  one  is  to  reckon  with  facts, 
we  must  recognize  that  this  in  most  cases  is 
an  impossibility.  However  great  the  dis- 
appointment to  the  individual  young  states- 
man may  be,  it  is  a  duty  of  his  constituent 
not  to  expect  any  such  immediate  results  and 
not  to  turn  against  him  because  he  fails  to 
achieve  the  impossible. 

It  is  not  necessarily  a  sign  of  incapacity  on 
his  part.  It  is  simply  the  inevitable  result  of 
our  system  of  government,  in  which  the 
really  young  man  has  much  less  show  for 
leadership  than  was  the  case  a  hundred 
years  ago  or  than  is  the  case  in  England 


96    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

at  the  present  time.  It  is  seldom  the 
young  man  of  dash  and  brilliancy  who  rises 
to  the  top  in  our  national  councils.  It 
is  rather  the  veteran  who  has  fought  his  way 
up  from  the  ranks  step  by  step.  This  is  not 
due  merely  to  the  fact  that  committee  pro- 
motions are  regulated  largely  by  seniority  of 
membership  in  the  House,  but  it  is  due  also 
to  the  increasingly  unwieldy  size  of  the 
national  legislature  and  to  the  fact  that  we 
do  not  have  in  this  country,  as  is  the  case  in 
England,  a  distinct  ruling  group  who  can 
advance,  almost  as  rapidly  as  they  please,  a 
young  man  of  marked  promise  and  can  make 
sure  of  his  continuous  election  by  providing 
a  safe  borough  for  him  in  case  of  any  tem- 
porary disaster.  The  result  is  that  most  of 
our  parliamentary  leaders  are  well  advanced 
in  years.  A  man  who  can  rise  to  the  leader- 
ship of  his  party  on  the  floor  of  the  House 
at  the  age  of  fifty  is  spoken  of  as  "a  young 
leader." 

The  result  is  that  continuance  of  service 
is  of  more  importance  than  individual  origin- 
ality. It  is  practically  impossible  for  a 
leader  to  arise  out  of  a  district  which   is 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  97 

always  changing  its  mind  regarding  its 
representative,  and  yet  it  is  often  such  a 
district  which  bewails  the  fact  that  its  own 
representative  seems  to  have  so  little  influ- 
ence in  national  councils.  The  reply  is  that 
if  a  constituency  wishes  to  have  a  leader  they 
must  keep  him  there  long  enough  to  become 
a  leader.  I  do  not  mean  that  leadership  will 
come  simply  from  long  service.  There  must 
be  capacity  in  the  representative  as  well,  but 
practically  no  degree  of  ability  will  bring 
him  to  a  position  of  real  power  without  con- 
tinued service.  The  result  is  that  it  is  not 
uncommon  for  the  voter  to  turn  against  a 
representative  because  of  his  lack  of  influ- 
ence, and  by  changing  the  representative 
make  it  impossible  for  that  district  to  figure 
in  the  leadership  at  all. 

The  phrase  "rotation  in  office"  has  been 
very  popular  in  this  country,  especially  in 
the  past.  It  was  the  idea  that  everybody  in 
turn  should  hold  office,  whether  as  a  duty  or 
a  privilege.  If  office  holding  was  a  duty, 
everybody  ought  to  take  his  turn.  If  there 
was  something  in  it  of  advantage  to  the  indi- 
vidual, everybody  ought  to  have  his  share. 


98    POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

This  has  been  very  familiar  doctrine  even 
down  to  modern  times  in  the  case  of  state 
legislatures,  and  in  some  states  there  has 
been  almost  a  standing  rule  that  a  man 
should  not  serve  more  than  one,  or  at  most 
two,  terms.  The  resulting  incompetence  of 
state  legislatures  hardly  needs  to  be  com- 
mented upon.  The  only  result  was  that  in 
some  small  districts  nearly  everybody  could 
have  the  distinction  of  having  once  in  his  life 
been  a  representative  at  the  state  capitol. 
But  this  principle  no  longer  has  such  a  hold 
as  formerly  and  nobody  would  advance  it  as 
a  general  rule  in  national  affairs. 

On  the  contrary,  if  what  I  have  said 
regarding  the  insignificance  of  the  average 
representative  in  Congress  and  the  great 
power  of  the  few  leaders  is  true,  it  would 
seem  to  be  a  duty  of  the  constituent  to  give 
a  hard  working,  intelligent  representative 
every  chance  to  rise  to  a  position  of  greater 
influence.  This  is  something  which  I  think 
the  voter  should  carefully  consider.  I  mean 
that  in  case  of  doubt  he  should  always  lean 
toward  the  incumbent  for  the  time  being. 
Both  efficiency  and  power  increase  with  the 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  99 

length  of  tenure,  and  this  fact  is  a  fact  which 
the  voter  must  carefully  keep  in  mind  in 
making  his  choice,  not  only  in  the  election 
but  in  the  preliminary  nominations.  A  man 
may  have  served  in  Congress,  let  us  say, 
three  terms.  A  rival  candidate  appears  for 
the  nomination  in  that  party  and  you  feel 
that,  on  the  whole,  the  new  candidate  is 
superior.  What  is  your  duty  in  the  matter? 
Should  you  vote  for  the  better  man?  In 
some  cases  you  may  decide  that  you  con- 
scientiously must  do  so.  In  other  cases  you 
may  conscientiously  decide  that  if  you  keep 
the  other  man  in  office  he  will  ultimately  be- 
come better  than  his  rival  candidate  could 
within  a  given  period  of  time.  In  other 
words,  he  has  so  much  time  to  his  credit.  His 
efficiency  has  been  increased  by  so  much. 
The  other  man  must  begin  at  the  beginning. 
In  so  far  as  you  wish  a  man  from  your  sec- 
tion to  have  a  position  of  prominence,  to  be 
one  of  the  men  who  really  frame  national 
policies,  really  control  national  affairs,  you 
must  be  ready  to  stand  by  him  as  loyally  as 
you  conscientiously  can. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  REPRESENTATIVE  AND 
HIS  CONSTITUENCY 

The  subject  to  which  I  wish  to  call  your 
attention  in  this  fourth  lecture  is  the  relation 
of  the  representative  to  his  constituents. 
Once  having  been  elected  by  their  votes  and 
dependent  upon  their  support,  what  is  his 
duty  to  them?  This  involves  at  the  outset 
the  whole  question  of  whether  a  representa- 
tive in  a  legislative  body  should  be  inde- 
pendent in  thought  and  action,  working  and 
voting  for  what  he  considers  the  best  inter- 
ests of  the  nation  at  large,  or  whether,  on  the 
contrary,  he  is  merely  the  agent  for  his 
particular  constituency,  pledged  to  work  and 
vote  for  what  may  be  to  the  particular  inter- 
est of  his  district.  This  is  a  question  as  old 
as  representative  government  and  one  which 
was  discussed  long  before  the  United  States 
became  a  nation  at  all.  I  wish,  however,  to 
point  out  one  thing  in  the  beginning  which 
you  should  keep  clearly  in  mind.     I  can  do 


THE  CONSTITUENCY  101 

so  best  perhaps  by  quoting  a  sentence  or  two 
from  a  lecture  by  President  Hadley  entitled 
"Workings  of  our  Political  Machinery" 
(published  in  his  "Standards  of  Public 
Morality"),  a  lecture  to  which  I  shall  have 
occasion  to  refer  several  times  in  the  remain- 
ing lectures  of  this  course. 

Mr.  Hadley  says:  "A  number  of  congress- 
men go  to  Washington  pledged  to  act  in  the 
interests  of  those  who  sent  them.  This 
pledge  is  not  an  explicit  one.  There  will 
always  be  men  who  disregard  it  in  certain 
emergencies,  and  who  prefer  the  high  claims 
of  the  country  to  the  lower  claims  of  the 
party  or  district.  But  these  cases  will  be 
relatively  few." 

What  I  especially  call  your  attention  to 
in  this  passage  for  the  moment  is  that  he 
groups  together  the  "lower  claims"  of 
"party"  and  "district"  as  contrasted  with  the 
higher  claims  of  the  country  at  large.  I 
think  that  it  is  important  to  keep  the  ques- 
tion of  the  claims  of  party  and  the  claims  of 
district  quite  distinct.  In  fact,  I  shall  try 
to  prove  to  you  later  that  one  of  the  most 
effective  causes  leading  in  the  last  few  years 


102  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

to  a  relative  lessening  of  the  demands  of  par- 
ticular districts  is  the  increased  necessity  of 
strict  party  loyalty.  They  may  both  be 
"lower  claims,"  but  one,  I  think,  tends  partly 
to  eliminate  the  other.  This,  however,  is  a 
matter  for  later  discussion.  I  speak  of  it 
here  so  that  you  may  keep  your  minds 
clearly  on  the  fact  that  it  is  the  question  of 
service  to  the  district  rather  than  of  service 
to  the  country  at  large  which  I  am  now 
discussing. 

I  do  not  know  that  I  can  say  anything 
new  upon  this  subject.  I  should  like  to  give 
you  the  views  of  many  different  thinkers  of 
different  types,  but  our  time  will  not  permit. 
You  young  men,  probably  with  scarcely  an 
exception,  take  it  for  granted  that  the  higher 
ethical  duty  is  service  to  the  country  as  a 
whole,  and  I  certainly  agree  with  you.  On 
the  other  hand,  you  are  probably  deeply 
shocked  at  the  very  suggestion  that  it  is  the 
duty  of  a  Congressman  to  act  simply  as  the 
agent  of  his  own  constituents  and  fight  solely 
for  their  interests,  while  I,  though  disagree- 
ing with  this  theory,  am  not  shocked  by  it  at 
all.     I  know  very  able  men  who  defend  it 


THE  CONSTITUENCY  103 

upon  grounds  which  we  may  hold  to  be 
untenable,  but  which  are  in  no  sense  immoral, 
or  which  do  not  even  show  a  lower  moral 
conception  than  that  held  by  those  who 
disagree  with  them. 

I  have  found  in  nxy  reading  that  on  most 
political  questions  Edmund  Burke  always 
speaks  more  wisely  than  anyone  else,  as  well 
as  more  eloquently,  and  a  perusal  of  some 
of  his  speeches  shows  how  little  the  ethical 
problems  of  politics  have  changed  in  a 
century  and  a  half.  His  is  probably  the 
classical  expression  of  the  theory  that  a 
parliament  is  not,  as  he  puts  it,  "a  congress 
of  ambassadors  from  different  and  hostile 
interests,"  but  rather  is  a  body  representing 
one  nation  with  one  interest.  I  wish  to  quote 
somewhat  at  length  from  his  noble  speech 
"To  the  Electors  of  Bristol,"  delivered  just 
after  his  election  to  Parliament  from  that 
city  in  November,  1774.    He  says: 

"Certainly,  gentlemen,  it  ought  to  be 
the  happiness  and  glory  of  a  representa- 
tive, to  live  in  the  strictest  union,  the 
closest  correspondence,  and  the  most 
unreserved  communication  with  his  con- 


104  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

stituents.  Their  wishes  ought  to  have 
great  weight  with  him;  their  opinion  high 
respect;  their  husiness  unremitted  atten- 
tion. It  is  his  duty  to  sacrifice  his  repose, 
his  pleasures,  his  satisfactions,  to  theirs; 
and,  above  all,  ever,  and  in  all  cases,  to 
prefer  their  interest  to  his  own.  But,  his 
unbiassed  opinion,  his  mature  judgment, 
his  enlightened  conscience,  he  ought  not 
to  sacrifice  to  you ;  to  any  man,  or  to  any 
set  of  men  living.  These  he  does  not 
derive  from  3rour  pleasure;  no,  nor  from 
the  law  and  the  constitution.  They  are  a 
trust  from  Providence,  for  the  abuse  of 
which  he  is  deeply  answerable.  Your 
representative  owes  you,  not  his  industry 
only,  but  his  judgment;  and  he  betrays, 
instead  of  serving  you,  if  he  sacrifices  it  to 
your  opinion. 

"My  worthy  colleague  says,  his  will 
ought  to  be  subservient  to  yours.  If  that 
be  all,  the  thing  is  innocent.  If  govern- 
ment were  a  matter  of  will  upon  any  side, 
yours,  without  question,  ought  to  be 
superior.  But  government  and  legisla- 
tion are  matters  of  reason  and  judgment, 


THE  CONSTITUENCY  105 

and  not  of  inclination;  and,  what  sort  of 
reason  is  that,  in  which  the  determination 
precedes  the  discussion;  in  which  one  set 
of  men  deliberate,  and  another  decide; 
and  where  those  who  form  the  conclusion 
are  perhaps  three  hundred  miles  distant 
from  those  who  hear  the  argument? 

"To  deliver  an  opinion,  is  the  right  of 
all  men ;  that  of  constituents  is  a  weighty 
and  respectable  opinion,  which  a  repre- 
sentative ought  always  to  rejoice  to  hear; 
and  which  he  ought  always  most  seriously 
to  consider.  But  authoritative  instruc- 
tions ;  mandates  issued,  which  the  member 
is  bound  blindly  and  implicitly  to  obey,  to 
vote,  and  to  argue  for,  though  contrary  to 
the  clearest  conviction  of  his  judgment 
and  conscience;  these  are  things  utterly 
unknown  to  the  laws  of  this  land,  and 
which  arise  from  a  fundamental  mistake 
of  the  whole  order  and  tenour  of  our  con- 
stitution. 

"Parliament  is  not  a  congress  of  am- 
bassadors from  different  and  hostile  inter- 
ests; which  interests  each  must  maintain, 
as  an  agent  and  advocate,  against  other 


106  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

agents  and  advocates;  but  parliament  is 
a  deliberative  assembly  of  one  nation,  with 
one  interest,  that  of  the  whole ;  where,  not 
local  purposes,  not  local  prejudices  ought 
to  guide,  but  the  general  good,  resulting 
from  the  general  reason  of  the  whole. 
You  chuse  a  member  indeed;  but  when 
you  have  chosen  him,  he  is  not  a  member 
of  Bristol,  but  he  is  a  member  of  parlia- 
ment." 

I  do  not  believe  that  anything  can  be 
added  to  this  eloquent  statement  of  Burke's 
in  favor  of  the  independence  of  a  legislative 
representative  in  exercising  his  own  best 
judgment  and  following  his  own  conscience 
in  working  for  the  general  good.  There  may 
be  some  statement  of  the  case  on  the  other 
side  in  literature,  replying  to  this  classical 
argument  of  the  greatest  of  English  political 
philosophers,  but  if  so  I  have  never  seen 
it.  I  mean  a  statement  by  a  conscientious 
believer  in  the  doctrine  that  the  representa- 
tive should  be  merely  the  agent  of  his  con- 
stituents. President  Hadley,  who  does  not 
believe  in  this  theory,  has  made  an  interest- 
ing statement  of  the  position  in  that  essay 


THE  CONSTITUENCY  107 

to  which  I  referred  at  the  beginning  of  this 
lecture.    He  puts  it  as  follows : 

"Many  men  who  admit  in  theory  that 
their  duty  to  the  country  is  greater  and 
more  important  than  their  duty  to  their 
constituents  disclaim  their  responsibility 
for  putting  this  theory  in  practice.  They 
say  frankly  that  while  our  government 
would  be  a  better  one  if  everybody  recog- 
nized that  principle,  it  will  only  introduce 
confusion  and  injustice  today  if  a  few 
good  people  work  for  the  benefit  of  the 
nation  while  a  great  many  people  who  are 
not  so  good  have  only  the  claims  of  the 
party  or  the  district  in  view.  They  hold 
that  the  selfishness  of  a  number  of  sections 
of  the  country,  each  pulling  in  its  own 
way,  will  produce  a  fairly  salutary  gen- 
eral result  for  the  country  as  a  whole. 
Equity  between  the  different  parts  be- 
comes in  their  minds  a  more  prominent 
consideration  than  the  general  interests  or 
safety  of  the  whole,  which  they  are  willing 
to  trust  to  Providence  to  take  care  of. 
They  are  in  the  mental  attitude  of  the 
little  girl  who  saw  a  picture  of  Daniel  in 


108  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

the  lion's  den,  and  whose  sympathies  were 
excited,  not  so  much  by  the  danger  or 
probable  fate  of  the  prophet,  as  by  the 
disadvantageous  position  of  a  little  lion 
in  the  corner  who,  as  she  said,  probably 
wouldn't  get  anything." 

This  statement  of  President  Hadley's  is 
admirable,  but  I  do  not  think  it  tells  the 
whole  story.  You  see,  he  gives  it  as  an  argu- 
ment by  men  who  defend  such  a  practice  as 
a  necessary  matter  of  expediency  under 
given  conditions,  but  who,  as  he  says,  frankly 
believe  that  our  government  would  be  a 
better  one  if  everybody  recognized  the  other 
principle.  This  would  imply  that  no  one 
conscientiously  believes  that  even  in  prin- 
ciple the  best  government  can  be  secured  by 
averaging  the  conflicting  interests  of  par- 
ticular localities.  I  know  of  men  of  no  mean 
ability  and  of  long  political  experience  who, 
however,  do  maintain  this  view.  In  doing 
so  they  are  carrying  their  ideas  of  indi- 
vidualism and  democracy  to  a  strictly  logical 
conclusion. 

From  your  study  of  economics  you  are 
familiar  with  the  fact  that  the  great  school 


THE  CONSTITUENCY  109 

of  political  economy,  which  was  founded 
by  Adam  Smith  and  dominated  English 
thought  through  the  first  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  started  on  the  assumption 
that  each  man  knows  his  own  interest  best 
and  also  knows  best  how  to  get  it :  that  conse- 
quently the  interests  of  society  will  be  best 
served  by  allowing  complete  liberty  to  the 
individual  to  follow  his  own  interest  with 
only  such  restrictions  as  will  protect  the 
rights  of  others.  Adam  Smith  said  that 
through  the  interplay  of  these  rival  forces 
of  self-interest  men  are  led  "by  an  invisible 
hand"  to  best  serve  society.  He  comes,  then, 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  interference  of  the 
legislator  in  commercial  matters  at  least  is 
"as  impertinent  as  it  is  harmful." 

Carried  to  its  logical  conclusion,  such  a 
doctrine  of  individualism  would  seem  to 
warrant  the  elimination  altogether  of  the 
effort  to  work  for  the  general  good.  If  each 
individual  really  knows  what  is  best  for  him, 
he  will  work  to  secure  that  end.  Thus, 
within  any  given  district,  each  man  voting 
intelligently  for  his  own  interests,  the  ex- 
pression of  the  majority  will  inevitably  be 


110  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

an  expression  of  what  is  best  for  that  com- 
munity. Then  let  each  district  be  repre- 
sented in  the  national  council  and  let  each 
representative  work  solely  for  the  interest 
of  his  particular  district,  and  equally  inevit- 
ably the  result  of  majority  action  must  mean 
the  adoption  of  such  legislation  as  is  for  the 
best  interests  of  the  community  as  a  whole. 
I  once  heard  this  theory  very  forcibly  stated 
by  Thomas  B.  Reed  of  Maine,  one  of  the 
greatest  speakers  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives has  ever  had. 

A  friend  of  mine,  who  is  well  known  in 
the  political  arena  and  who  has  given  much 
thought  to  this  question,  believes  that  the 
proposition  that  this  interplay  of  individual 
interests  will  bring  the  best  general  result 
is  not  really  a  theory  at  all  but  rather  an 
exact  mathematical  demonstration.  He 
cannot  see  how  anyone  can  dispute  it.  To 
him  it  is  as  simple  as  an  equation  in  algebra 
or  as  the  proposition  that  the  resultant  of 
two  forces  working  at  right  angles  is  motion 
along  the  line  of  the  diagonal.  Unfortu- 
nately it  is  not  necessarily  true,  however, 
that  motion  along  the  line  of  the  diagonal  is 


THE  CONSTITUENCY  111 

for  the  best  public  good.  Human  affairs  are 
not  determined  by  mathematical  principles. 
For  instance,  a  very  valid  objection  to  arbi- 
tration of  industrial  disputes  is  that  too 
often  the  arbitrators  do  not  really  arbitrate 
according  to  some  definite  principle  but 
merely  "split  the  difference."  How  harm- 
ful such  a  practice  may  be  was  shown  by 
King  Solomon  when  he  suggested  an  equal 
division  of  the  child  between  the  two  rival 
claimants. 

In  any  case  this  theory  involves  two 
premises;  first,  that  every  man  does  know 
what  is  best  for  him  and,  secondly,  that  he 
knows  best  how  to  get  it.  These  are  exactly 
the  premises  which  my  friend  accepts.  He 
is  consequently  in  favor  of  every  movement 
toward  making  legislation  by  the  people  as 
direct  as  possible.  The  people,  he  believes, 
cannot  go  wrong  when  no  restraint  is  put 
upon  their  action  in  seeking  their  own  ends. 
They  have  the  right  to  what  they  want  and 
they  are  only  kept  from  securing  this  right 
by  constitutional  and  political  limitations  to 
their  power.  He,  therefore,  favors  not  only 
direct  primaries  for  every  elective  office,  even 


112  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

that  of  President,  but  the  initiative,  the 
referendum,  and,  of  course,  the  recall. 
Under  such  a  theory  the  very  object  of  the 
recall  is  to  force  the  representative  to  vote 
on  every  measure  exactly  as  the  majority 
of  his  constituents  want  him  to  vote.  If  he 
does  not  do  so  in  any  particular  case  he 
destroys,  you  see,  that  beautiful  mathe- 
matical equation. 

I  do  not  wish  here  to  enter  into  any  dis- 
cussion of  these  new  proposals  to  give  a  more 
direct  and  rapid  expression  of  the  will  of  the 
majority.  We  should  note,  however,  that 
they  are  bound  to  make  for  a  political  system 
under  which  the  member  of  Congress  is  no 
longer  a  man  of  independent  judgment,  but 
simply  an  agent  to  express  the  desires  of  the 
particular  group  which  he  represents.  The 
extraordinary  thing  is  that  we  frequently 
find  one  and  the  same  man  advocating  these 
measures  and  ardently  urging  every  form  of 
direct  legislation  and  at  the  same  time  con- 
demning Congressmen  for  their  subserviency 
to  "mere  popular  whim."  It  is,  of  course, 
the  old,  age-long  problem  of  direct  govern- 
ment by  the  people  versus   representative 


THE  CONSTITUENCY  113 

government.  Whichever  attitude  you  may 
take  on  this  question,  you  should  at  least 
keep  clearly  in  mind  all  the  consequences 
involved.  If  you  wish  to  have  great  states- 
men of  courage  and  independence,  whose 
judgments  guide  the  policies  of  the  nation, 
you  must  favor  some  form  of  truly  repre- 
sentative government,  even  if  it  carries  some 
evils  with  it.  On  the  other  hand,  if  you  wish 
the  people  of  each  district  to  have  the  oppor- 
tunity to  give  immediate  expression  to  their 
desires,  you  must  not  expect  to  have  leaders 
of  this  character.  I  believe  this  at  least  to 
be  true  in  a  system  such  as  ours  where  a 
Congressman  practically  always  represents 
the  district  in  which  he  lives  and  must  at 
least  be  elected  from  his  own  state. 

I  do  not  know  how  far  this  "agency 
theory"  may  appeal  to  any  of  you.  I  have 
already  said  that  I  subscribe  rather  to  the 
idea  expressed  in  the  noble  words  of  Burke. 
I  will  assume,  then,  for  the  rest  of  our  dis- 
cussion of  this  subject  that  you  do  the  same. 
In  any  case,  I  should  like  to  suggest  again 
that  I  do  not  believe  that  the  "agency 
theory"  is  carried  out  even  in  practice  today 


114  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

as  much  as  it  was  a  dozen  years  ago,  or  as 
much  as  many  people  believe  it  to  be,  and  I 
believe  that  one  reason  for  this  lies  in  the 
control  of  the  individual  representative  by 
his  loyalty  to  party  or  by  the  pressure  of  the 
party  caucus.  This  is  a  topic  to  be  dis- 
cussed in  the  next  lecture.  There  still 
remain  intricate  problems  regarding  the 
duty  of  the  representative  to  his  constitu- 
ency, even  if  we  agree  that  in  matters  of 
general  legislation  he  should  be  a  free  agent 
following  his  own  judgment  and  conscience. 
After  all,  it  must  of  course  be  remembered 
that,  whatever  theory  we  may  hold  regard- 
ing the  relation  of  the  representative  toward 
public  policies  in  the  matter  of  independence 
and  freedom  of  judgment,  he  is  really  a 
representative;  that  is,  he  represents  the 
particular  district  from  which  he  is  elected 
and  the  men  who  vote  for  him  have  not  done 
so  solely  from  the  idea  that  he  should  be  a 
great  statesman  exercising  his  mind  all  the 
time  on  the  problems  of  national  welfare. 
They  want  part  of  his  mind  and  part  of  his 
time  themselves  and,  what  is  more,  I  think 
they  have  a  right  to  expect  a  certain  amount 


THE  CONSTITUENCY  115 

of  attention  from  him.  It  is  sometimes 
possible  for  a  man  practically  to  disregard 
his  constituency  and  tell  them  that  he  will 
pay  no  attention  whatsoever  to  their  de- 
mands in  the  matter  of  patronage  or  appro- 
priations, or  their  requests  for  assistance  in 
personal  matters,  however  legitimate.  Such 
men,  however,  if  they  are  to  keep  their  posi- 
tion in  Congress  at  all,  must  have  already 
achieved  such  a  commanding  position  that 
their  districts  take  sufficient  pride  in  the 
power  of  their  representative  to  offset  their 
dissatisfaction  at  the  neglect  of  their  inter- 
ests. Mr.  Reed,  for  example,  who  expressed 
the  agency  idea  theoretically,  was  powerful 
enough  to  disregard  the  importunities  of  his 
constituents  in  practice. 

The  average  Congressman  must  recognize 
the  fact  that  he  is  expected  to  attend  to  a 
great  many  matters  on  behalf  of  the  people 
who  have  elected  him.  Here  is  where  his 
ethical  problems  are  likely  to  become  acute, 
but  I  beg  of  you  at  least  that  you  will  realize 
that,  like  other  problems  I  have  suggested 
to  you,  they  are  not  problems  of  the  present 
time  alone.     It  is  very  easy  to  make  asser- 


116  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

tions  regarding  "the  corruption  of  modern 
politics"  or  the  lowness  of  "modern  moral 
standards"  and  to  hark  back  to  an  earlier 
day  when  great  men  lived  who  had  no 
thought  save  for  the  welfare  of  the. public. 
But  it  does  not  take  much  reading  in  the 
letters  and  diaries  of,  say,  the  eighteenth 
century  to  realize  that  the  mixture  of  selfish 
and  patriotic  motives  was  as  prominent  then 
as  now.  Even  great  philosophers  cam- 
paigned for  places  of  emolument  either  at 
the  universities  or  in  public  service  in  a  way 
which  would  seem  beneath  the  dignity  of 
even  the  youngest  instructor  in  these  days. 
Certainly  the  requirements  made  by  his  con- 
stituents on  a  parliamentary  representative 
and  the  degree  to  which  it  was  necessary  for 
him  to  attend  to  manifold  personal  interests 
were  not  only  as  great,  but  were  probably 
greater  a  century  and  more  ago  than  they 
are  today.  I  have  already  quoted  at  some 
length  from  Burke's  speech  "To  the  Electors 
of  Bristol"  of  1774.  Six  years  after,  in 
1780,  he  again  spoke  at  the  Guildhall  in 
Bristol  in  a  speech  entitled  "Upon  Certain 
Points  Relative  to  His  Parliamentary  Con- 


THE  CONSTITUENCY  117 

duct."  He  felt  it  necessary  to  defend  him- 
self against  four  charges  of  which  one  was 
the  neglect  of  his  constituents,  and  on  this 
point  he  speaks  as  follows : 

"With  regard  to  the  first  charge,  my 
friends  have  spoken  to  me  of  it  in  the  style 
of  amicable  expostulation;  not  so  much 
blaming  the  thing,  as  lamenting  the 
effects.  Others,  less  partial  to  me,  were 
less  kind  in  assigning  the  motives.  I 
admit,  there  is  a  decorum  and  propriety 
in  a  member  of  parliament's  paying  a 
respectful  court  to  his  constituents.  If  I 
were  conscious  to  myself  that  pleasure  or 
dissipation,  or  low  unworthy  occupations, 
had  detained  me  from  personal  attend- 
ance on  you,  I  would  readily  admit  my 
fault,  and  quietly  submit  to  the  penalty. 
But,  gentlemen,  I  live  at  an  hundred 
miles  distance  from  Bristol;  and  at  the 
end  of  a  session  I  come  to  my  own  house, 
fatigued  in  body  and  in  mind,  to  a  little 
repose,  and  to  a  very  little  attention  to  my 
family  and  my  private  concerns.  A  visit 
to  Bristol  is  always  a  sort  of  canvass ;  else 
it  will  do  more  harm  than  good.    To  pass 


118  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 


from  the  toils  of  a  session  to  the  toils  of  a 
canvass,  is  the  furthest  thing  in  the  world 
from  repose.  I  could  hardly  serve  you  as 
I  have  done,  and  court  you  too.  Most  of 
you  have  heard,  that  I  do  not  very  re- 
markably spare  myself  in  publick  busi- 
ness; and  in  the  private  business  of  my 
constituents  I  have  done  very  near  as 
much  as  those  who  have  nothing  else  to 
do.  My  canvass  of  you  was  not  on  the 
change,  nor  in  the  county  meetings,  nor 
in  the  clubs  of  this  city.  It  was  in  the 
house  of  commons;  it  was  at  the  custom- 
house; it  was  at  the  council;  it  was  at  the 
treasury;  it  was  at  the  admiralty.  I  can- 
vassed you  through  your  affairs,  and  not 
your  persons.  I  was  not  only  your  repre- 
sentative as  a  body;  I  was  the  agent,  the 
solicitor  of  individuals ;  I  ran  about  wher- 
ever your  affairs  could  call  me;  and  in 
acting  for  you  I  often  appeared  rather  as 
a  ship-broker,  than  as  a  member  of  par- 
liament. There  was  nothing  too  labori- 
ous, or  too  low  for  me  to  undertake.  The 
meanness  of  the  business  was  raised  by 
the  dignity  of  the  object." 


THE  CONSTITUENCY  119 

You  see,  then,  that  in  Burke's  day  the 
representative  was  pestered  by  a  great  many 
local  interests  and  that  even  so  great  a  man 
as  Burke  was  obliged  to  stoop  to  what  he 
himself  called  "ship-broker's  work."  Of 
course,  it  really  is  the  duty  of  the  Congress- 
man to  take  care  of  the  interests  of  his  con- 
stituents in  every  honorable  way.  Although 
we  do  not  accept  the  "agency  theory"  in  the 
field  of  measures  of  public  policy,  the  Con- 
gressman must  to  a  certain  extent  be  the 
agent  of  the  members  of  his  district  and 
assist  them  in  matters  where  they  have  just 
cause  of  complaint  or  just  claims. 

For  instance,  besides  the  public  acts 
passed  by  Congress,  there  is  a  large  amount 
of  what  is  known  as  private  legislation ;  that 
is,  legislation  affecting  the  position  only  of 
some  individual.  As  good  an  illustration  as 
any  of  this  class  of  legislation  are  the  private 
pension  bills  with  which  every  Congressman 
has  to  deal.  There  is  a  general  pension  law 
describing  the  general  rules  under  which 
pensions  will  be  granted.  It  is  quite  pos- 
sible that  under  these  general  rules  pensions 
may  be  granted  to  quite  undeserving  cases. 


120  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  equally  possible 
that,  through  some  technicality,  very  deserv- 
ing cases  may  be  excluded  under  the  general 
rules.  In  such  a  case  an  appeal  is  made  to 
the  Congressman  and  a  private  act  granting 
relief  to  that  particular  person  may  be 
introduced.  Naturally,  the  Congressman 
who  gets  a  pension  for  anybody  makes  him- 
self popular  with  that  person  and  his  or  her 
friends.  He  runs  little  danger  because  no 
considerable  number  of  people  are  likely  to 
vote  against  him  for  having  secured  pensions 
in  this  way.  The  result  is  that  his  own 
interest  would  usually  lead  him  to  try  to  get 
bills  through,  not  only  in  cases  which  he 
really  thought  to  be  deserving  and  where, 
under  the  real  spirit  of  the  law,  a  pension 
should  be  granted,  but  also  in  cases  where 
he  knows  that  there  are  no  just  grounds  for 
the  claim. 

It  is  j  ust  here  that  the  test  of  a  Congress- 
man's conscientious  devotion  to  public  ser- 
vice comes  in.  It  is  his  duty  toward  his 
constituents  to  do  what  he  can  to  see  that 
their  just  claims  are  recognized.  It  is  his 
duty  toward  the  country  at  large  to  see  that 


THE  CONSTITUENCY  121 

none  but  just  claims  are  granted.  In  some 
cases  it  may  be  very  difficult  for  him  to 
decide.  The  brave  Congressman  will  stand 
firmly  against  improper  claims,  but  he  will 
get  little  credit  for  it.  Unfortunately,  where 
bravery  brings  no  rewards  it  is  much  easier 
to  be  accommodating  than  to  be  brave. 

Another  line  of  activity  in  which  the  Con- 
gressman is  bound  to  engage  is  concerned 
with  the  administration  of  federal  affairs  in 
his  district.  There  may  be  incompetence  in 
the  post  office  or  in  the  custom  house. 
There  may  be  rules  of  a  department  which 
work  hardship  in  the  case  of  his  particular 
district.  One  may  say  that  the  Congressman 
should  not  bother  himself  with  matters  of 
this  kind;  that  the  dissatisfied  party  should 
appeal  directly  to  the  administrative  depart- 
ment concerned  in  order  to  secure  any  miti- 
gation of  the  evil.  But  even  the  best  depart- 
ments are  necessarily  bureaucratic  and  likely 
to  be  somewhat  scornful  of  local  objections. 
I  believe  it  is  the  duty  of  the  Congressman 
in  such  a  case  to  devote  his  time  to  the  inter- 
ests of  his  constituents  in  seeing  that  these 
matters  are  fairly  considered  by  the  admin- 


122  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

istrative  officials.  After  all,  a  Congressman 
will  be  listened  to  with  much  more  attention 
than  some  simple  constituent. 

This  fact  unfortunately,  however,  leads 
many  Congressmen  to  attempt  to  use  their 
position  of  influence  to  browbeat  honest 
administrative  officials  into  acting  contrary 
to  the  public  service  for  the  sake  of  their 
particular  district,  or,  what  is  worse,  for  the 
sake  of  some  particular  constituent.  It  is 
nothing  short  of  disheartening  to  note  cases 
which  too  frequently  arise  of  Congressmen 
actually  making  threats  to  block  appropria- 
tions, or  to  somehow  hamper  the  administra- 
tion of  a  particular  bureau,  unless  the  official 
yields  a  point  in  favor  of  his  particular  claim. 

This  is  one  of  the  problems  which  ought 
to  be  fairly  simple  in  the  mind  of  a  conscien- 
tious representative.  Where  it  is  a  matter 
of  really  improving  the  administration  of 
federal  affairs  in  his  district  it  is  one  of  his 
duties  to  the  district  to  use  his  influence.  No 
one,  however,  could  question  the  immorality 
of  his  yielding  to  the  demands  of  certain 
interests   in   his   district  to   urge   increased 


THE  CONSTITUENCY  123 

laxity  of  administration  or  to  impede  an 
honest  official  in  his  efforts  to  do  his  duty. 

The  attitude  of  some  people  in  this 
regard  is  so  naive  as  to  indicate  that  they 
are  not  so  much  immoral  as  unmoral.  I 
knew  of  one  case  where  a  man  appeared 
before  an  official  of  the  treasury  regarding  a 
customs  matter  and  seriously  urged  that 
certain  action  on  his  part  should  be  allowed. 
When  it  was  pointed  out  to  him  that  this  was 
strictly  contrary  to  law  he  naively  said, 
"Yes,  but  when  the  bill  was  up  I  told 
Senator  Blank  how  that  clause  in  the  law 
would  work  against  me  and  he  said  that 
it  was  impossible  to  make  any  change  in  it, 
and  all  I  could  do  would  be  to  find  some 
loophole  in  the  law."  In  this  particular 
case  there  was  no  malign  intention  of  cor- 
rupting the  official,  but  such  a  frank  con- 
fession to  the  very  person  whose  duty  it  was 
to  administer  the  law  shows  an  extraor- 
dinary attitude  toward  the  problems  of 
public  duty. 

One  of  the  most  difficult  problems  is 
the  problem  of  patronage.  Here  again, 
although  there  is  much  that  is  vicious  in  our 


124  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

system,  you  should  recognize  that  it  is 
entirely  proper  for  the  representative  to 
have  his  say  regarding  office  holders  in  his 
own  district.  The  Congressman  is  fre- 
quently looked  upon  with  suspicion  every 
time  he  asks  for  certain  appointments  to  be 
made,  as  if  in  some  wav  it  were  a  dishonor- 
able  thing  for  him  to  take  part  in  such 
matters.  The  head  of  an  administrative 
department  may  adopt  the  attitude  that  it 
is  solely  his  business  to  make  appointments 
and  that  he  will  make  them  solely  for  the 
good  of  the  public  service.  Of  course,  this 
is  the  principle  on  which  appointments 
should  be  made.  At  the  same  time  the  Con- 
gressman is  entitled  to  an  opinion  as  to 
which  men  in  his  district  are  best  suited  for 
any  particular  positions.  The  difficulty 
arises  where  the  Congressman  uses  his 
influence  to  have  men  appointed  who  will  be 
useful  to  him  personally.  It  seems  to  be 
part  of  our  whole  machinery  of  government 
for  offices  to  be  largely  awarded  as  a  reward 
for  personal  and  party  service.  Much,  of 
course,  has  been  done  to  eliminate  the  evils 
of  the  patronage  system  through  the  adop- 


THE  CONSTITUENCY  125 

tion  of  the  civil  service  system.  But  there 
still  remain  a  good  many  offices  appointment 
to  which  is  a  personal  matter,  and  where  the 
Congressman  finds  it  very  hard  to  eliminate 
the  consideration  of  how  the  appointment  is 
going  to  affect  him  individually. 

Here  again  the  difficulty  lies  in  knowing 
what  is  the  honest  and  right  thing  to  do 
under  given  circumstances.  A  man  may 
honestly  feel  that  his  continuance  in  Con- 
gress is  a  desirable  thing  for  his  community; 
that  he  can  both  represent  the  interests  of  his 
district  more  efficiently  than  a  rival  candi- 
date and  that  he  can  also  serve  the  country 
better;  but  nominations  and  elections  depend 
very  largely  upon  a  man's  standing  with  the 
political  organization  of  the  community  and 
something  more  is  needed  to  maintain  the 
tenure  of  one's  position  than  conscientious 
work  in  the  interests  of  the  country  at  large. 
Most  men  at  least  must  pay  some  atten- 
tion to  the  effect  of  their  influence  in  keeping 
themselves  "solid"  with  the  organization.  It 
is  very  easy  for  a  man  to  delude  himself  into 
believing  that  such  appointments  as  are 
likely   to    strengthen    his    position    are   the 


126  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

appointments  which  are  best  for  the  public 
service.  It  is  here  that  any  of  you  who  go 
into  this  career  will  find  the  greatest  strain 
put  upon  your  consciences  and  will  be  most 
likely  to  fall  below  the  high  standard  which 
men  of  your  training  and  education  should 
uphold. 

Another  matter  which  as  a  Congressman 
you  will  find  occupying  much  of  your  atten- 
tion and  again  making  a  severe  test  of  your 
moral  fibre  is  in  the  matter  of  getting  appro- 
priations for  public  works  within  your 
district.  Some  men  in  Congress  maintain 
their  positions  almost  entirely  because  of  the 
success  they  have  shown  in  always  "looking 
out  for  the  district."  Each  section  of  the 
country  selfishly  wishes  to  get  as  much 
money  as  possible  out  of  the  national  treas- 
ury and  the  so-called  "pork  barrel"  bills  are 
those  which  are  surrounded  by  the  most 
unsavory  methods  of  log-rolling  and  trad- 
ing. Here  again  the  test  is  a  severe  one 
because  a  Congressman  may  well  feel  that, 
if  a  certain  scale  of  expenditure  on  the  part 
of  the  national  government  is  to  be  adopted 
anyway,  it  is  really  his  duty  to  see  that  his 


THE  CONSTITUENCY  127 

community  gets  a  fair  share.  It  is  the  case  of 
thq  little  girl  of  Mr.  Hadley's  story  who 
feared  the  little  lion  would  not  get  his  fair 
share  of  Daniel.  But  this  desire  to  be  sure 
that  his  district  gets  its  share  is  just  that 
which  makes  it  so  difficult  for  Congress  as  a 
whole  to  maintain  a  policy  of  scrupulous 
economy,  or  even  honesty,  in  matters  of  this 
kind.  ^. 

The  way  in  which  government  contracts 
have  been  secured  for  the  dredging  of  cer- 
tain rivers,  or  the  establishment  of  some 
government  institution,  or  the  awarding  of 
contracts  for  public  buildings,  shows  the 
extent  to  which  our  representatives  have 
fallen  below  that  standard  of  moral  duty 
which  would  be  expected  of  them  by  any 
young  man  starting  into  public  life  with  an 
enthusiasm  for  the  right.  In  any  individual 
case  it  may  be  very  difficult  to  draw  the  line. 
It  is  obviously  quite  proper  for  the  repre- 
sentative to  use  his  influence  to  secure  the 
building  of  proper  and  suitable  federal 
buildings  in  the  towns  of  his  district.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  is  obviously  immoral  for 
him  to  attempt  to  secure  an  appropriation  in 


128  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

the  way  of  some  government  work  such  as 
dredging  a  river  when  he  knows  that  no 
possible  economic  benefit  at  all  commen- 
surate with  the  amount  of  the  expenditure 
can  be  derived;  that  is,  when  it  is  simply 
pouring  the  funds  of  the  federal  treasury 
temporarily  into  a  district  so  that  the  con- 
tractors, the  traders,  and  the  laborers  profit 
at  government  expense  without  leaving  any 
permanent  gain  as  a  result  of  such  expendi- 
ture. But  between  the  obviously  proper  and 
the  obviously  wrong  thing  there  are  many 
instances  where  the  issue  is  a  very  grave  one 
and  where  the  individual,  if  he  aims  to  live 
up  to  the  moral  standard  with  which  he 
started,  must  search  his  mind  and  heart  with 
perfect  frankness  to  determine  which  line  of 
action  he  should  take. 

One  of  the  most  flagrant  cases  of  derelic- 
tion of  duty  on  the  part  of  Congressmen  is  in 
failing  to  support  the  efforts  of  an  adminis- 
trative department  toward  a  more  economi- 
cal management  of  its  affairs.  Many  useless 
offices  are  maintained  in  order  to  give  more 
jobs  to  the  members  of  their  districts.  There 
are   useless    army   posts,   navy   yards,   and 


THE  CONSTITUENCY  129 

custom  houses.  It  is,  of  course,  quite  pos- 
sible that  a  Congressman  should  honestly 
differ  with  the  administrative  department 
regarding,  let  us  say,  the  maintenance  of  a 
custom  house  at  a  particular  port.  He 
might  feel  that  the  commercial  interests  of 
his  section  would  really  be  jeopardized  by  a 
too  radical  effort  at  economy.  In  such  a 
case  he  may  honestly  urge  the  claims  of  his 
district  as  vigorously  as  he  likes.  It  is  much 
more  likely  to  be  the  case,  however,  that 
what  he  fears  is  that  some  good  supporter 
of  his  own  will  be  put  out  of  a  job  and  that 
Ins  influence  in  the  district  will  be  diminished 
by  this  administrative  improvement. 

One  of  the  most  amusing  tilings  to  watch 
in  our  politics — at  least  in  a  cynical  sense 
amusing — is  the  continuous  criticism  of  the 
administrative  departments  by  Congress 
for  their  extravagance  and  the  continuous 
blocking  of  many  honest  efforts  at  economy 
by  these  same  Congressmen.  Most  Con- 
gressmen believe  in  economy  in  general,  but 
it  takes  an  unusual  one  to  believe  that  the 
federal  government  should  economize  in  his 
district.    I  think  it  is  only  fair  to  ask  you  to 


130  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

remember,  when  you  read  speeches  attack- 
ing the  extravagance  of  the  federal  govern- 
ment, that  such  extravagance  is  frequently 
forced  upon  an  unwilling  department,  even 
after  repeated  appeals  by  it  for  reform,  by 
a  Congress  really  more  eager  to  maintain 
their  constituents  in  offices  than  to  protect 
the  public  treasury. 

Still  more  difficult,  perhaps,  than  matters 
of  patronage  and  federal  expenditures  is 
the  question  of  the  representative's  attitude 
toward  the  business  interests  of  his  particu- 
lar district.  If  we  adopt  the  "agency 
theory"  the  matter,  of  course,  becomes  rela- 
tively simple  since,  whatever  his  own  views 
may  be  regarding  what  policy  is  for  the 
welfare  of  the  country  as  a  whole,  he  would 
advocate  such  policies  as  were  for  the  inter- 
ests of  his  community.  If,  however,  we 
believe  that  the  Congressman  should  vote 
according  to  the  dictates  of  his  conscience 
in  such  a  way  as  to  serve  the  interests  of  the 
whole  nation,  it  would  seem  that  he  should 
pay  no  attention  whatsoever  to  the  special 
effect  upon  his  own  district  of  legislation 
which  he  believes  to  be  for  the  common  good. 


THE  CONSTITUENCY  131 

I  think  you  will  all  agree  that  this  is  the 
higher  attitude  and  that  if  he  cannot  hold 
his  position  by  following  a  broad,  patriotic 
policy  of  this  kind  he  must  simply  make  his 
defense  before  his  people  on  a  higher  moral 
plane  and  leave  them,  in  case  they  wish  to 
pursue  a  purely  selfish  policy,  to  send  a  rep- 
resentative who  is  either  more  subservient 
or  who  conscientiously  believes  in  some  dif- 
ferent line  of  public  policy.  But  when  you 
are  practically  in  a  position  of  this  kind  the 
problem  is  not  quite  so  easy  as  it  seems  in 
the  lecture  room. 

One  of  the  most  important  lines  of  public 
policy  which  affects  greatly  and  in  varied 
manner  the  business  interests  of  different 
sections  is  the  tariff.  What  is  the  duty  of  the 
Congressman  who  believes  in  a  large  reduc- 
tion of  the  tariff  and  the  adoption  of  the 
principle  of  "tariff  for  revenue  only"  in 
the  case  of  industries  in  his  own  commu- 
nity which  he  thinks  would  be  injuriously 
affected,  or  which  might  even  be  forced  out 
of  existence  altogether?  The  obvious  an- 
swer is  that  he  should  courageously  take  his 
stand   according  to   his   conscience   on   the 


132  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

general  policy  and  not  attempt  to  make  any 
exception  in  the  case  of  some  particular 
local  industry.  But  suppose  that  he  knows 
that  the  measure  which  is  to  be  adopted  prac- 
tically is  going  to  be  a  compromise  matter 
and  is  not  going  to  carry  out  any  theoretical 
principle;  that  it  will  carry  many  rates 
which  have  been  the  result  of  the  special 
care  taken  by  other  representatives  for  the 
industries  of  their  districts.  If  he  is  willing 
to  be  a  lone  hero  who  makes  no  compromise 
whatsoever,  how  about  his  feeling  of  respon- 
sibility toward  those  who  have  elected  him? 
Shall  his  district  be  made  the  lone  victim? 
If  there  were  some  absolutely  clear-cut  prin- 
ciple of  tariff  making,  and  every  representa- 
tive would  vote  for  or  against  the  measure 
according  to  some  such  principle,  the  prob- 
lem would  be  clear  enough.  But  tariff  acts 
are  a  mass  of  actual  rates  and  these  rates  are 
matters  of  compromise  and  adjustment. 

I  think  I  can  see  a  certain  ground  under 
such  conditions,  since  the  interests  of  other 
districts  are  being  carefully  watched  and 
efforts  being  made  to  protect  them,  for  a 
man's  claiming  that  he  ought  to  go  a  certain 


THE  CONSTITUENCY  133 

way  along  the  same  path  in  looking  out  for 
the  material  welfare  of  his  own  neighbors 
and  supporters ;  that  in  fact  he  is  derelict  to 
his  duty  to  them  if  he  does  not.  I  do  not  say 
that  I  believe  this  is  sound.  I  say  only  that 
I  can  understand  a  man's  having  here  a 
genuine  moral  problem.  Again  it  becomes 
so  much  a  matter  of  degree.  It  is  not  merely 
the  question  of  whether  or  not  he  shall  try 
to  secure  every  possible  advantage  for  his 
district.  It  may  be  the  question  whether  he 
ought  not  to  do  something  simply  to  give 
his  district  a  fair  show  with  the  others  so 
that  any  sacrifice  that  is  to  be  made  under 
the  new  policy  will  be  a  sacrifice  fairly 
and  evenly  distributed,  and  so  that  it  will 
not  bear  with  extreme  and  unjust  force 
on  his  constituents.  The  trouble  with  such 
an  attitude  is  that  it  does  very  largely  take 
the  principle  out  of  the  matter  altogether, 
and  makes  the  problem  of  each  separate 
industry,  and  the  amount  of  duty  on  its  pro- 
ducts, an  individual  problem  where  his  con- 
science may  be  easily  stilled  and  his  moral 
fibre  weakened  with  each  successive  conces- 
sion. 


134  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

As  I  have  already  suggested,  one  thing 
which  helps  the  representative  out  in  matters 
of  this  kind  is  the  force  of  the  party  organi- 
zation and  the  party  caucus.  It  is  inter- 
esting to  see  the  way  in  which  caucus  action 
has  to  some  extent  changed  the  problem  of 
loyalty  to  district.  It  has  substituted  in 
certain  measure  the  idea  of  strict  loyalty  to 
party  and  that  is  the  problem  which  will 
concern  us  in  the  next  lecture. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  REPRESENTATIVE  AND 
HIS  PARTY 

The  last  problem  we  have  to  consider  is 
the  relation  of  the  representative  to  his  own 
party.  I  will  begin  by  referring  to  certain 
statements  by  President  Hadley  in  that 
lecture  on  the  "Workings  of  our  Political 
Machinery"  to  which  I  have  referred  before 
and  which  all  of  you  should  certainly  read. 
It  is  full  of  the  wisest  comment.  Mr.  Had- 
ley speaks  of  the  difficulty,  under  our  pres- 
ent system,  of  getting  efficient  legislation, 
due  to  the  fact  that  to  a  very  large  extent  our 
representatives  are  not  sent  to  Congress  to 
make  laws  or  to  govern  the  country;  that 
under  our  constitutional  system  the  Presi- 
dent cannot  govern  alone  and  Congress 
cannot  govern  alone;  that  this  separation 
leads  often  to  such  a  dead-lock  that  the 
representative  is  much  more  concerned  with 
problems  of  place  and  patronage  and  the 
wants  of  his  district — questions  which  I  dis- 


136  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

cussed  briefly  in  the  last  lecture — than  he  is 
with  questions  relating  to  legislation  in 
behalf  of  the  general  welfare.  Mr.  Hadley 
thinks  that  as  a  necessary  consequence  the 
political  boss  has  become  a  more  powerful 
figure  in  actual  government  than  the  elective 
representative  of  the  people.  I  cannot  con- 
sider in  detail  the  many  interesting  sugges- 
tions which  he  makes  in  connection  with  these 
matters  and  I  agree  with  him  very  largely 
in  all  that  he  says  when  his  remarks  are 
applied,  as  he  suggests  in  one  passage,  to  the 
workings  of  our  political  machinery  at  the 
end  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

What  I  wish  to  suggest  here  is  that  I 
believe  we  have  been  going  through  a  change 
in  recent  years  which  is  of  the  utmost 
importance  and  which  the  future  historian 
may  write  down  as  revolutionaiy  in  charac- 
ter. In  his  preface  Mr.  Hadley  suggests 
that  if  anyone  should  take  up  the  book  a  few 
years  later  he  hopes  that,  though  the  events 
in  the  foreground  may  have  changed,  the 
reader  will  find  the  underlying  principles 
yet  of  value.  This  was  written  in  1907  and 
is    a    striking   illustration    of   how   rapidly 


THE  PARTY  137 

changes  may  take  place,  or  at  least  how 
rapidly  we  may  become  conscious  of  such 
changes.  Unless  I  am  completely  mistaken 
in  my  diagnosis,  this  new  development  had 
only  begun  a  few  years  before  1907  and  has 
only  come  to  show  its  full  importance  in  the 
years  since  then. 

Perhaps  I  can  best  indicate  what  I  mean 
by  this  change  by  telling  of  a  conversation  I 
had  with  a  bright  young  German  who  came 
to  me  on  his  travels  with  a  letter  of  intro- 
duction about  1903.  The  first  question  he 
asked  me  was:  "Who  rules  your  country?" 
I  began  to  reply  by  some  explanation  of  our 
system  of  government,  to  which  he  said 
impatiently:  "But  I  don't  want  any  of  your 
theories.  I  know  your  constitution  by  heart 
and  have  read  my  Bryce  and  all  the  other 
books  thoroughly.  I  want  to  know  the 
names  of  the  men.  Is  it  John  Smith  or 
William  Jones,  or  who  is  it?"  For  the 
moment  I  was  obliged  to  hesitate.  I  told 
him  that  if  he  had  asked  me  that  question  a 
few  years  earlier  I  would  have  given  him 
the  names  of  a  small  group  of  Republi- 
can senators  and  I  named  as  those  who  I 


138  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

thought  could  have  been  fairly  considered 
the  "big  five"  of  the  old  days — Senator 
Aldrich  of  Rhode  Island,  Senator  Hale  of 
Maine,  Senator  Allison  of  Iowa,  Senator 
Piatt  of  Connecticut,  Senator  Spooner  of 
Wisconsin,  with  a  choice  between  three  or 
four  others  for  a  possible  sixth  place,  and 
suggested  that  to  these  should  certainly  be 
added  the  Speaker  of  the  House  and  pos- 
sibly one  or  two  chairmen  of  leading  House 
committees.  These  certainly  were  the  men 
who  determined  more  than  anyone  else  what 
legislation  should  go  through  Congress,  or 
perhaps  it  would  be  better  to  say  of  that 
particular  group  that  they  were  the  men  who 
determined  what  legislation  should  not  go 
through  Congress.  "Well,"  he  said,  "if  they 
don't  rule  the  country  now,  who  does  rule 
it?"  To  this  I  replied,  "The  issue  is  at  the 
moment  not  entirely  settled,  but,  if  I  am 
not  mistaken,  the  country  is  ruled  by  Theo- 
dore Roosevelt." 

I  tell  this  story  not  merely  to  suggest 
that  at  that  time  there  had  been  a  change  in 
personalities,  but  to  call  your  attention  to 
the  significance  of  a  great  change  in  prin- 


THE  PARTY  139 

ciple;  namely,  the  increasing  power  of  the 
President  as  a  leader  of  a  party  with  a  defi- 
nite program  of  legislation  in  which  he  takes 
the  initiative.  I  think  that  this  movement 
has  been  going  on  steadily  ever  since  and, 
what  is  more,  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that 
it  is  an  inevitable  tendency  and  one  which 
meets  the  desires  of  the  American  people. 
If  this  is  so,  it  is  no  longer  as  true  as  for- 
merly that  neither  the  President  nor  Con- 
gress can  govern  the  country,  and  it  becomes 
quite  possible  that  a  strong  executive,  acting 
as  a  party  leader  and  working  in  harmony 
with  a  group  of  Congressional  leaders,  can 
in  the  future  fill  the  position  formerly  occu- 
pied by  a  different  group  of  political  bosses. 
Referring  once  more  from  Mr.  Hadley's 
essay,  he  makes  a  very  interesting  parallel 
between  American  politics  at  the  end  of  the 
nineteenth  century  and  English  politics  at 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  The  pas- 
sage is  so  significant  that  I  wish  to  quote  it 
in  full.    He  says : 

"There  has  been  one  other  country  and 
one  other  age  in  which  political  parties 
have  had  the  same  character  that  they 


140  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

have  in  the  United  States  today.  That 
was  in  England  during  the  eighteenth 
century.  And  it  is  a  noticeable  fact  that 
the  English  government  in  the  eighteenth 
century  had  this  characteristic  in  common 
with  the  American  government  in  the 
nineteenth;  that  the  executive  and  legis- 
lative branches  of  the  government  were  so 
far  separated  that  no  means  of  harmo- 
nizing their  action  was  provided  or 
allowed  by  the  Constitution.  Under  such 
circumstances  the  English  parties  at  the 
beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  like 
the  American  parties  at  the  end  of  the 
nineteenth,  were  primarily  occupied  with 
keeping  certain  men  in  office,  and  the  pas- 
sage of  legislative  measures  formed  only  a 
very  incidental  element  in  their  plans. 
With  this  striking  parallel  in  view,  we 
may  well  believe  that  the  separation  of 
powers  between  the  different  departments 
of  the  government,  and  the  perpetual 
threat  of  a  deadlock  thereby  produced, 
have  as  an  almost  necessary  consequence 
the  dominion  of  the  party  manager:  that 
Walpole  and  Tweed  were  but  different 


THE  PARTY  141 

specimens  of  the  same  genus;  and  that 
their  power,  however  widely  different  in 
its  methods  of  exercise,  was  an  outgrowth 
of  the  same  cause." 

What  I  am  suggesting  here  is  that,  just 
as  in  English  politics  a  system  has  been 
worked  out  to  avoid  the  extreme  separation 
of  powers  between  the  different  departments 
of  government,  something  of  the  same  kind 
is  now  being  worked  out  in  this  country, 
perhaps  in  a  somewhat  blundering  way,  but 
nevertheless  in  a  way  that  is  going  pro- 
foundly to  affect  American  politics  in  the 
future.  Under  the  working  out  of  this  new 
system,  we  may  possibly  predict  for  our 
politics  in  the  twentieth  century  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  close  of  the  nineteenth 
that  it  will  no  longer  be  true  that  parties  are 
primarily  occupied  with  keeping  certain  men 
in  office,  or  that  the  passage  of  legislative 
measures  is  only  an  incidental  element  in 
their  plans. 

This,  I  think,  is  a  result  of  several  factors 
of  which  I  will  mention  three.  First,  the 
actual  breakdown  of  the  old  system  as  a 
practical  working  force  for  governmental 


142  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

purposes;  secondly,  the  growth  of  a  new 
spirit  of  earnestness  in  our  politics,  due,  I 
think,  largely  to  the  rising  generation  of  the 
Middle  West;  and,  third,  the  continuous 
increase  in  the  size  of  the  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives which  has  made  that  body  entirely 
unwieldy  except  under  some  new  form  of 
party  organization  and  party  leadership.  In 
England  the  difficulties  arising  from  separa- 
tion of  powers  between  the  executive  and  the 
legislative  were  overcome  through  the  grad- 
ual development  of  a  system  of  responsible 
cabinet  government  and  the  growth  of  the 
cabinet  as  the  real  executive  authority.  In 
this  country  no  such  system  could  be  adopted 
without  most  radical  constitutional  changes 
and,  although  I  sympathize  largely  with 
those  who  advocate  responsible  cabinet  gov- 
ernment as  the  best  form  in  a  democratic 
community,  I  do  not  believe  that  it  could  be 
arbitrarily  substituted  for  the  American 
system.  There  will  probably  be  some 
natural  evolution  which  will,  however,  bring 
about  similar  results  and  I  find  the  first  step 
in  this  direction  in  the  increasing  initiative 
of  the  President  in  legislative  matters. 


THE  PARTY  143 

Some  people  have  been  inclined  to  quote 
with  a  somewhat  cynical  smile  President 
Roosevelt's  continuous  reference  to  "my 
policies,"  but  in  that  very  phrase  I  find 
something  much  more  profound  than  the 
self-assurance  of  any  individual.  I  will 
not  attempt  here  to  give  any  opinion  as  to 
how  far  it  took  the  extraordinary  personality 
of  Mr.  Roosevelt  to  make  this  conception  a 
vital  part  of  American  political  life  or  how 
far  it  was  something  inevitable  which  had 
to  come  in  any  case.  The  main  point  is  that, 
apparently,  it  has  come.  The  people  are  not 
offended  by  any  talk  about  "my  policies" 
because  they  now  expect  the  President  to 
have  policies.  Before  President  Taft  came 
into  office  in  1909  he  issued  a  formal  state- 
ment of  his  policies,  covering,  as  I  recall  it 
now,  thirteen  specific  heads  in  the  nature  of 
legislation.  I  believe  that  this  will  continue 
to  be  the  case  in  the  future ;  that  as  we  speak 
of  Roosevelt  policies  or  Taft  policies,  so  we 
will  speak  of  a  definite  legislative  program 
by  the  name  of  future  Presidents. 

This  may  seem  very  simple  and  natural  to 
you  young  men  who  have   become  accus- 


144  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

tomed  to  it,  but  it  is  a  much  more  important 
change  than  you  probably  recognize.  It  has 
become  necessary  simply  from  the  break- 
down of  the  old  system.  What  the  people 
wanted  and  what  the  country  needed  was 
something  in  which  to  believe.  It  is  more  or 
less  true,  I  think,  that  the  old  parties  fifteen 
or  twenty  years  ago  stood  in  the  minds  of  the 
voters  for  little  more  than  the  question  of 
who  should  get  in  or  who  should  stay  out.  It 
was  essential  that  there  should  be  a  more 
definite  conception  of  a  party  program  and 
a  more  responsible  party  leadership  for 
carrying  that  program  into  effect.  By 
responsible  leadership  I  mean  here  concrete 
leaders  whom  the  people  could  hold  respon- 
sible for  carrying  out  the  policies  of  their 
choice  and  whom  they  could  reward  or 
punish  according  to  the  way  in  which  this 
work  was  accomplished. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  we  have  come 
to  the  point  or  shall  come  to  the  point  of 
purely  one  man  power.  I  mean  that  we 
seem  to  be  overcoming  some  of  the  old  diffi- 
culties by  the  growth  of  the  President  as  a 
leader   in   legislative   matters   through   the 


THE  PARTY  145 

power  of  his  personality  and  his  influence  on 
Congress.  With  this,  however,  must  go,  of 
course,  a  clear-cut  party  leadership  in  Con- 
gress itself,  combined  with  at  least  a  working 
degree  of  harmony  between  the  President 
and  these  Congressional  leaders.  Note  one 
thing,  please,  in  this  connection,  to  which  I 
can  refer  only  briefly.  If  what  I  have  said 
before  regarding  the  certain  tenacity  of 
party  organization  is  true,  this  new  move- 
ment inevitably  gives  to  the  President  some- 
what more  of  a  partisan  character  than  many 
idealists  want  him  to  have.  It  is  frequently 
said  that  when  once  elected  to  that  office  a 
man  should  forget  his  party  and  be  simply 
"President  of  all  the  people."  This  is  one 
of  those  phrases  which  appeal  to  our  ideals, 
but  which  are  too  often  used  without  any 
analysis  of  their  real  meaning.  The  position 
of  President  of  the  United  States  is  perhaps 
unique  among  all  political  positions  of  the 
world.  We  expect  him  to  be  something 
more  than  a  party  leader  and  we  also  expect 
him  to  be  something  more  than  a  figurehead, 
and  this  new  movement  especially  expects 
him  to  be  a  leader  in  a  legislative  program. 


146  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

In  England  they  have  the  King  for  non- 
partisan purposes  and  the  prime  minister 
to  carry  out  the  will  of  the  people  at  any 
given  time  regarding  policies  to  be  enacted. 
In  this  country  we  are  coming  to  expect  the 
President  to  be  both,  but,  if  I  am  correct  in 
saying  that  legislative  programs  must  first 
be  party  programs  which  are  presented  to 
the  people  on  election  day,  it  follows  that 
the  President,  if  he  is  to  lead  in  the  carrying 
through  of  such  a  program,  must  become 
more  and  more  the  real  leader  of  his  party. 
You  must  recognize,  then,  that  you  will  be 
entirely  inconsistent  if  you  expect  him  to 
perform  this  function  and  yet  be  solely  "the 
President  of  all  the  people."  He  may  still 
remain  the  President  of  all  the  people  in  the 
sense  that  he  is  elected  by  the  majority 
to  carry  through  the  program  which  they 
desire.  If  this  seems  to  you  to  in  some  ways 
reduce  the  high  dignity  of  the  office,  you 
should  remember  that  efficiency  in  govern- 
ment is  more  important  than  ceremonial 
form  and  such  a  President  can  still  be  whole- 
heartedly interested  in  what  he  considers  the 
welfare  of  the  nation  at  large.     If  he  is 


THE  PARTY  147 

primarily  allied  with  a  certain  party,  he  is  at 
least  free  from  sectional  control,  and  be- 
comes the  representative  of  the  whole 
country. 

I  have  suggested  that  the  second  factor 
working  in  this  direction  was  the  new  spirit 
of  earnestness  in  our  political  life.  I  think 
it  is  true  that  a  new  element  has  grown  up 
within  the  ranks  of  both  parties  which  has 
shown  increasing  power  in  party  councils 
and  at  the  polls  and  which  has  been  largely 
responsible  for  the  overthrow  of  many  of  the 
old  leaders.  One  reason  why  the  old  leaders 
have  so  completely  failed  to  realize  the 
importance  of  this  new  movement,  and  have 
largely  lost  their  leadership  as  a  result,  is 
that  they  have  not  been  able  fully  to  recog- 
nize the  fact  that  people  are  taking  political 
problems  seriously.  By  this  I  mean  not 
simply  the  problem  of  who  is  going  to  be 
elected,  but  what  the  policy  of  the  country 
shall  be  on  a  large  number  of  matters  of  the 
utmost  importance — the  tariff,  currency, 
conservation,  trusts,  and  many  others. 

In  the  early  days  of  the  Republic  these 
matters  were  taken  seriously.    In  the  period 


148  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

of  great  prosperity  following  the  Civil  War, 
when  it  was  almost  certain  that  one  party 
would  stay  in  power  for  a  long  time,  the 
mass  of  people  took  little  seriously  except 
their  business.  The  play  of  political  parties 
seemed  to  them  largely  a  game,  or  a  scramble 
for  spoils.  Under  such  conditions  the  old 
character  of  party  government  was  possible. 
Now  a  third  period  has  come  in  which  people 
are  thinking  on  these  subjects  and  are  feel- 
ing deeply  regarding  them.  Frequently 
thejr  are  very  ignorant  and  frequently  they 
are  misled,  but  at  least  they  are  in  earnest. 
They  really  expect  their  votes  to  count  for 
something  in  the  way  of  a  legislative  pro- 
gram. They  even  take  party  platforms 
seriously  and  propose  to  hold  a  party  and  its 
leaders  responsible  for  its  success  or  failure 
in  meeting  the  obligations  of  its  platform. 

The  third  factor,  as  I  have  suggested,  is 
the  increasing  unwieldiness  of  the  House  of 
Representatives  due  to  the  increase  in  num- 
bers. Or  at  least  I  think  this  should  be 
added  to  the  other  two  factors  as  explaining 
why  it  is  that  a  new  form  of  party  responsi- 
bility is  being  developed.    In  the  early  days 


THE  PARTY  149 

of  Congress  the  numbers  were  not  so  large 
but  that  men  could  independently  hold  per- 
sonal views  on  many  matters  of  public  policy 
and  could  thrash  out  many  of  these  questions 
in  actual  debate.  The  theory  of  our  govern- 
ment, of  course,  is  that  these  questions 
should  be  debated  fully  and  that  through  the 
mutual  persuasion  of  arguments  an  agree- 
ment could  be  reached  which  would  repre- 
sent the  careful  and  intelligent  judgment  of 
the  legislative  body.  Many  people  believe 
that  this  still  ought  to  be  the  case  and  that 
somehow  the  old  practice  can  be  restored. 
I  myself  believe  it  is  time  to  recognize  that 
we  cannot  return  to  this  earlier  ideal.  The 
problems  of  today  are  much  more  numerous 
and  much  more  complex  than  formerly.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  House  has  become  much 
larger  and  the  opportunity  for  the  individual 
to  be  heard  on  many  subjects  is  inevitably 
less.  It  is  practically  impossible  at  the 
present  time,  if  there  is  to  be  any  legislation 
at  all,  or  anything  approaching  efficient 
government,  to  allow  every  representative 
to  give  voice  to  his  own  views  on  every  sub- 
ject.    In  many  cases,  in  fact,  the  leaders 


150  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

must  assume  a  very  arbitrary  attitude 
toward  the  rank  and  file.  Even  a  man  of 
great  ability  and  conscientious  in  his  study 
of  these  questions  cannot  be  allowed  to  take 
up  the  time  of  the  legislative  body  indefi- 
nitely. Still  less  can  the  many  men  who  wish 
to  talk  simply  to  impress  their  constituents 
with  their  own  importance  be  given  such 
liberties. 

To  this  is  due  one  of  the  changes  which  I 
have  already  suggested  in  earlier  lectures; 
namely,  that  under  the  present  system  the 
representative  no  longer  has  as  much  of  an 
opportunity  to  stand  out  for  the  particular 
interests  of  his  district  as  formerly.  There 
is  a  party  program  to  go  through.  It  has 
been  framed  probably  by  a  few  leaders  in 
consultation  with  the  President.  It  repre- 
sents the  program  of  the  party  for  the  whole 
country  and  the  particular  claims  of  this 
district  or  that  district  can  no  longer  be 
given  much  of  a  hearing.  Thus  in  large 
measure  party  loyalty  has  supplanted  loy- 
alty to  one's  section.  This  is  not  always  in 
the  nature  of  a  very  willing  loyalty  and  it 
means  that  members  are  whipped  into  line 


THE  PARTY  151 

by  those  in  control  to  stand  for  a  national 
program  represented  by  a  national  platform 
which  was  presented  to  all  the  people  and 
on  which  they  were  elected. 

Many  of  them,  doubtless,  when  whipped 
into  line  in  this  manner,  sympathize  with 
Disraeli's  feeling  toward  Sir  Robert  Peel  at 
the  time  that  the  former  was  a  young  and 
somewhat  obstreperous  member  of  Peel's 
party.  You  may  remember  that  Peel  had 
been  very  active  in  working  for  the  abolition 
of  slavery  in  the  British  colonies.  One  day 
in  his  absence  from  the  House  of  Commons 
a  "snap"  motion  regarding  the  sugar  duty 
was  carried  contrary  to  Peel's  general  policy 
by  the  votes  of  some  of  the  high  protection- 
ists in  his  own  party,  including  Disraeli.  Sir 
Robert  promptly  reappeared  in  the  House, 
coerced  his  recalcitrant  members,  and  in- 
sisted on  the  vote  being  rescinded.  This  was 
done,  but  not  before  Disraeli  had  had  time 
to  rise  in  his  seat  and  remark,  "The  right 
honorable  gentleman  seems  to  be  opposed  to 
slavery  in  every  part  of  the  world  except  in 
the  benches  behind  him." 

The  chief  agency  for  the  efficient  carrying 


152  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

through  of  a  party  program  is  the  party 
caucus.  On  all  matters  of  vital  policy  the 
majority  holds  a  caucus  in  which  the  party 
as  a  body  agrees  to  stand  by  a  certain  meas- 
ure, not  only  in  general,  but  in  detail.  This 
measure,  which  has  been  framed  by  a  com- 
mittee, or  more  commonly  by  one  or  two 
leaders  representing  the  committee  (in  con- 
sultation with  other  party  leaders  inside  and 
outside  the  House),  may,  of  course,  be 
amended  in  caucus,  although  it  is  becom- 
ing increasingly  the  case  that  even  caucus 
amendments  are  not  many  and  that  the  bill 
of  the  leaders  is  accepted.  However,  in 
some  vital  cases  radical  action  may  be  taken. 
In  such  a  case  the  leaders  would  stand 
loyally  by  the  amendments.  It  may  even 
happen  that  the  caucus  will  turn  against  the 
leaders  altogether  and  entirely  reverse  a 
proposed  policy.  The  main  point  is  that  all 
members  of  the  caucus,  except  in  rare  in- 
stances (and  usually  they  give  notice  at  the 
time),  are  bound  to  stand  by  the  measure 
in  toto  when  it  comes  on  the  floor  of  the 
House.  There  may  be  occasional  excep- 
tions, but  the  general  principle  of  the  party 


THE  PARTY  153 

caucus  is  that  all  amendments  to  be  made  by 
the  majority  will  be  made  first  in  caucus  and, 
secondly,  that  all  amendments  by  the  minor- 
ity party  made  when  the  bill  is  brought  in 
for  the  vote  will  be  regularly  voted  down. 
The  caucus  measure  becomes  the  established 
party  measure.  Men  who  voted  for  an 
amendment  in  caucus  will  vote  against  the 
same  amendment  when  introduced  by  the 
opposition  on  the  floor  of  the  House.  In  the 
same  way,  of  course,  the  minority  may  hold 
a  caucus  and  agree  to  some  definite  bill  as  a 
substitute  or  some  definite  line  of  policy  in 
opposition  to  the  majority  measure. 

What  shall  we  say  of  this  method  of  legis- 
lation and  the  problems  which  it  presents  to 
the  representative  as  to  his  choice  between 
independent  judgment  and  loyalty  to  the 
party?  I  confess  that  at  one  time  I  felt  that 
the  growth  of  the  power  of  the  caucus  was 
extremely  unfortunate  and  something  to  be 
fought  in  every  way.  I  am,  however,  far 
from  sure  that  I  would  take  such  a  position 
at  the  present  time.  In  fact,  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  under  present  conditions  it  is 
about  the  only  possible  method  of  efficient 


154  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

legislation  under  our  form  of  government. 
Let  us  analyze  it  a  little.  Three  criticisms 
may  be  brought  against  it. 

First,  that  it  leads  to  hasty  legislation 
without  any  adequate  knowledge  of  the  facts 
necessary  to  a  wise  conclusion  and  with  a 
reckless  disregard  of  all  consequences  except 
the  political  effect  upon  the  party.  It  is 
perfectly  true  that  hasty  legislation  is  a 
characteristic  of  the  modern  tendency  in 
politics.  It  is  not,  however,  essentially  con- 
nected with  the  caucus  system;  that  is,  the 
caucus  system  may  facilitate  such  haste,  but 
is  not  the  cause  for  it.  One  reason  for  the 
desire  to  legislate  immediately,  without  too 
careful  consideration,  is  to  be  found  in  a 
natural  reaction  against  the  slow  methods  of 
legislation  which  have  resulted  from  our 
constitutional  system.  The  constitutional 
safeguards  were  originally  adopted  very 
largely  to  prevent  a  too  hasty  response  to  the 
immediate  will  of  the  people.  Do  not  allow 
yourselves  to  be  deluded  by  the  phrases  of 
some  orators  with  the  idea  that  a  more  direct 
response  of  the  legislative  body  to  the  popu- 
lar desire  is  a  "restitution  of  the  government 


THE  PARTY  155 

to  the  people."  It  is  not  a  question  of  resti- 
tution because  the  founders  of  the  Republic 
carefully  provided  against  hasty  and  impul- 
sive action.  If  their  judgment  was  in  error 
we  may  adopt  a  new  system,  but  remember 
that  it  will  be  a  new  system,  not  a  return  of 
something  that  has  somehow  been  stolen 
from  the  people. 

Unquestionably,  under  the  old  method  it 
was  frequently  difficult  for  the  people  to 
secure  the  enactment  of  such  measures  as 
they  desired  and,  furthermore,  one  reason 
for  the  revolt  against  the  established  system 
is  the  greater  intensity  of  interest  in  the 
actual  questions  involved,  to  which  I  have 
referred  above.  The  fact  is,  the  people  are 
impatient.  They  want  immediate  action. 
They  frequently  want  action  without  ade- 
quate consideration  of  the  complexity  of  the 
problem  involved.  As  a  result  a  party  which 
is  making  an  appeal  to  the  people  is  inclined 
to  declare  itself  immediately  in  some  definite 
program  with  very  little  consideration  of 
ultimate  consequences  so  long  as  they  meet 
the  popular  demand.  Under  party  organi- 
zation with  approaching  elections  it  is  prob- 


156  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

ably  too  much  to  ask  of  human  nature  that 
the  party  leaders  will  not  take  such  an 
attitude. 

A  year  ago  last  November  a  large  Demo- 
cratic majority  was  elected  to  the  House  of 
Representatives.  This  was  taken  to  mean 
on  the  part  of  most  politicians  that  the 
people  were  dissatisfied  with  Republican 
rule  and  especially  with  Republican  tariff 
policy.  About  a  year  ago  Congress  met  in 
extraordinary  session  with  the  Democrats  in 
control  of  the  House  and  with  a  presidential 
campaign  to  be  launched  upon  the  country 
the  following  year.  Under  the  circum- 
stances it  seemed  more  important  to  the 
Democratic  leaders  to  declare  some  definite 
tariff  policy  at  once  rather  than  to  work  out 
carefully  the  details  of  a  sane  and  well- 
rounded  tariff  measure  on  the  basis  of  a 
thorough  study  of  the  facts.  In  fact,  they 
introduced  several  measures  of  the  most 
careless  kind,  hastily  drawn,  and  put 
through  the  House  under  the  caucus  system. 
One  reason  for  this,  doubtless,  was  their  cer- 
tainty that  such  measures  could  not  receive 
the  approval  of  the  President  and  therefore 


THE  PARTY  157 

they  need  not  worry  much  about  details.  I 
hardly  need  to  tell  you  that  legislation  of  this 
character  seems  to  me  wrong  in  principle 
and  ultimately  of  grave  danger  to  the 
country.  I  hope,  however,  that  I  am  fair- 
minded  enough  to  recognize  that  it  was  the 
result  of  the  immediate  political  exigency 
and  what  to  me  seems  the  unreasoning  im- 
patience of  the  people  themselves  rather 
than  to  any  fatal  defect  in  the  present  legis- 
lative organization. 

Theoretically,  at  least,  under  the  system  of 
the  effective  leadership  of  the  few  and  the 
power  of  the  caucus  to  secure  results  with 
certainty,  legislation  still  might  be  carried 
on — and  in  the  future  I  hope  will  prove  to 
be  carried  on — in  a  more  intelligent  and 
thorough  manner.  The  recent  situation  has 
been  extremely  strained  and  our  political 
institutions  should  not  be  judged  by  these 
conditions  alone.  It  would  be  possible  even 
under  the  present  system,  especially  with  a 
more  self-restrained  voting  population,  for 
the  leaders  to  take  ample  time  for  due  con- 
sideration of  all  the  many  elements  involved 
in  a  legislative  program,  to  take  time  to 


158  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

secure  the  needed  information  as  the  basis  of 
sane  judgment,  and  to  work  out  measures 
which,  however  much  they  might  be  opposed 
on  principle  by  the  other  party,  would  stand 
the  test  of  expert  examination  in  the  matters 
of  detail.  In  the  same  way  the  caucus  itself 
might,  theoretically  at  least,  become  a  place 
of  genuine  and  effective  debate  as  to  the 
course  of  party  policy. 

The  second  objection  is  that  of  secrecy. 
The  caucus  is  a  private  affair  to  which  the 
public  is  not  admitted,  and  it  is  true  that, 
since  the  course  of  legislation  is  determined 
in  the  caucus,  it  does  come  in  a  measure  to  be 
legislating  in  secret.  On  the  other  hand, 
this  secrecy  cannot  be  preserved  very  invio- 
late and  the  action  of  the  individual  in  the 
caucus  can  probably  be  learned  by  his  con- 
stituents if  they  so  desire.  Some  people  have 
advocated  an  open  caucus.  It  seems  to  me, 
however,  that  the  closed  caucus  is  more 
logical.  One  hardly  would  expect,  for  in- 
stance, the  British  cabinet  to  admit  the 
public  into  their  debates  among  themselves 
as  to  just  what  measures  they  would  stand 
for  or  what  particular  form  any  measure  is 


THE  PARTY  159 

to  take.  If  the  opposition  of  this  or  that 
member  were  every  time  known  in  detail, 
the  strength  of  the  cabinet  as  a  leading  body 
would  be  diminished.  Nor  would  we  expect, 
for  example,  the  Supreme  Court  to  admit 
the  outside  public  into  its  discussions  of  a 
case  before  decision  had  been  rendered. 

The  third  objection  is  that  under  the  pres- 
ent system  the  minority  has  no  influence 
whatsoever  in  the  field  of  legislation.  This, 
of  course,  is  largely  true.  The  majority 
practically  agree  beforehand  that  they  will 
pay  no  attention  to  what  the  minority  say. 
This  certainly  is  a  great  change  from  the  old 
theory  of  parliamentary  government,  that 
the  leading  minds  of  the  country  should  get 
together  and  through  frank  discussion  and 
interchange  of  opinion  should  arrive  at  a 
conclusion  which  represented  the  best  opin- 
ion of  the  whole  group.  But  under  the 
present  conditions,  with  the  unwieldy  char- 
acter of  the  House,  to  which  I  have  already 
referred,  and  the  complexity  of  the  problems 
involved,  is  not  something  of  this  kind  prac- 
tically essential  to  efficiency?  After  all, 
somehow  Congress  must  legislate  and  those 


160  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

who  are  entrusted  with  the  chief  power  must 
get  measures  through  in  some  practicable 
way. 

The  result  is,  of  course,  in  many  ways 
unfortunate.  It  practically  takes  away  the 
force  of  even  the  ablest  speech  in  directing 
the  course  of  legislation  for  the  time  being. 
The  most  powerful  and  eloquent  debater  on 
the  minority  side  may  make  the  effort  of  his 
life  with  about  as  little  influence  as  King 
Canute  had  upon  the  waves  of  the  ocean. 
Does  this  mean,  however,  that  Congressional 
speeches  are  absolutely  futile  and  that  the 
power  of  effective  debating  is  no  longer  an 
influence  in  determining  the  course  of  public 
affairs?  Some  people  take  this  view.  It  is 
true,  I  think,  that  speeches  are  futile  for  the 
time  being,  and  that  bills  are  either  passed 
or  defeated  without  much  regard  for  the 
speeches  that  are  made  on  the  floor.  But 
they  none  the  less  have  their  ultimate 
purpose. 

You  see,  the  process  is  this.  The  bill  is 
first  framed  by  a  group  of  leaders.  It  is 
secondly  adopted  by  the  caucus.  It  is 
thirdly  defended  on  the  floor  of  the  House 


THE  PARTY  161 

by  the  majority  and  attacked  by  the  min- 
ority. The  decision  as  to  which  argument 
is  the  better  is  not  made  at  the  time.  This 
is  already  a  foregone  conclusion.  But  the 
decision  as  to  which  is  the  better  policy  is 
made  at  the  polls  at  the  next  election  and  it 
is  here  that  the  arguments  of  the  opposing 
sides  will  really  count.  Thus  Congress  be- 
comes a  great  forum  in  which  both  sides  of  a 
question  may  be  argued.  The  jury  to  make 
the  ultimate  decision  consists  of  the  people 
themselves  and  their  verdict  can  only  be 
rendered  at  a  subsequent  election.  I  am  not 
sure  that  under  present  conditions  this  is  not 
necessary  for  efficiency  in  legislation.  It  is 
all  very  different  from  our  old  theories  of 
what  a  parliamentary  body  should  be;  it 
unquestionably  makes  us  regret  the  passing 
of  the  old  influence  of  debate ;  but  it  is  prac- 
tically essential  under  present  conditions 
and  one  thing  of  the  utmost  importance 
which  should  be  said  in  its  favor  is  this ;  that 
it  puts  the  responsibility  for  a  given  policy 
upon  a  given  party  and  upon  a  given  group 
of  leaders  in  a  most  clear-cut  manner. 

I  think  this  is  a  point  which  many  people 


162  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

have  failed  to  realize — the  great  value  which 
comes  from  a  strict  party  responsibility. 
This  is  what  I  meant  in  suggesting  earlier 
that  we  were  evolving  for  ourselves  a  some- 
what original  type  of  responsible  govern- 
ment. If  measures  of  public  importance 
were  being  passed  always  by  a  combination 
of  voters  on  both  sides,  if  neither  one  party 
nor  the  other  as  a  whole  stood  absolutely  in 
the  lime  light  as  responsible  for  this  or  that 
measure,  the  public  would  never  know  where 
to  place  responsibility  and  could  probably 
be  more  easily  hoodwinked  than  under  the 
present  system.  This  present  system, 
carried  out  logically,  means  that  the  voters 
know  which  group  of  leaders  carried 
through  a  certain  group  of  measures.  They 
can  then  judge  the  party  as  a  whole  accord- 
ing to  its  record.  And  they  can  take  action 
accordingly. 

I  am  perhaps  forecasting  the  future  some- 
what too  much.  In  the  last  twelve  months 
we  have  seen  this  presumed  efficiency  of 
legislation  rendered  nugatory  by  a  dead- 
lock due  to  the  fact  that  the  President  is  of 
one  party  and  the  House  of  another.     But 


THE  PARTY  163 

this  may  always  happen  at  any  particular 
time,  due  to  the  difference  in  the  length  of 
tenure.  I  am  looking  on  the  subject,  how- 
ever, from  the  point  of  view  of  what  will 
happen  in  the  future  when  both  branches 
of  Congress  and  the  executive  position  are 
controlled  by  the  same  party.  It  is,  you 
see,  all  in  line  with  what  I  said  before 
regarding  the  position  of  the  President.  If 
the  President  is  to  become  a  party  leader  in 
the  sense  which  I  indicated,  it  is  essential 
that  when  Congress  is  controlled  by  a  ma- 
jority of  the  other  party  he  should  stand  by 
his  own  principles  and  by  his  own  platform 
in  all  loyalty.  Such  a  deadlock  cannot  long 
endure  since  the  public  will  ultimately  decide 
in  favor  of  one  party  or  the  other.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  this  new  power  of  the  Presi- 
dent is  to  continue,  there  will  no  longer  be 
that  instinctive  deadlock  between  the  Presi- 
dent and  Congress  to  which  Mr.  Hadley 
referred,  provided  that  they  are  both  of  the 
same  party.  He  and  a  group  of  sympa- 
thetic leaders  in  Congress  will  constitute  an 
effective  force  for  presenting  to  the  people 
for  their  judgment  a  legislative  policy  which, 


164  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

however  hastily  and  crudely  framed  in  many 
ways,  will  be  none  the  less  definite  and  intel- 
ligible. And  what  is  more,  the  country  will 
hold  them  responsible  for  it. 

What,  then,  becomes  the  position  of  the 
Congressman  in  the  matter  of  loyalty  to 
party  under  these  new  conditions? 

I  have  already  spent  so  much  time 
attempting  to  explain  the  character  of  the 
party  machinery  for  legislation  that  there  is 
little  time  to  go  into  detail  into  this  question 
of  the  duty  of  the  representative.  You  can 
see  from  what  I  have  said  that  I  am  inclined 
to  look  with  greater  favor,  even  from  a  moral 
point  of  view,  on  party  regularity  than  many 
public-spirited  citizens  with  whose  attitude 
you  are  familiar.  This  may  be  partly  due 
to  personal  temperament,  but  it  is  more  due, 
I  think,  to  a  conviction  that  in  most  cases  it 
is  today  the  only  means  of  securing  govern- 
ment efficiency.  It  doubtless  has  many  evils, 
but  I  think  in  the  long  run  that  the  worst  of 
these  are  more  than  offset  by  the  advantage 
which  comes  from  party  responsibility.  That 
is  one  reason  why  I  emphasized  that  point 
so  strongly  above. 


THE  PARTY  165 

It  is,  of  course,  true  that  cases  will  arise 
where  a  representative  cannot  conscien- 
tiously stand  by  the  action  of  his  caucus.  It 
may,  for  instance,  be  a  matter  of  some  fun- 
damental political  principle  on  which  the 
individual  member  is  absolutely  unable,  with 
a  clear  conscience,  to  yield  his  individual 
judgment.  It  is  impossible  here  to  take  up 
detailed  cases  of  such  character.  It  might 
perhaps  be  such  a  case  as  the  exemption  of 
labor  organizations  from  the  operation  of 
the  anti-trust  act,  or  from  the  use  of  injunc- 
tions against  them.  The  individual  member 
might  consider  this  to  be  class  legislation  of 
such  a  character  as  to  offend  against  the  very 
foundation  principles  of  American  govern- 
ment and  to  the  enactment  of  which  he  could 
under  no  circumstances  be  a  party.  Or  it 
might  be  a  proposition  for  some  form  of  fiat 
money  which,  knowing  that  it  would  be 
destructive  of  commercial  prosperity  and 
even  of  national  integrity,  he  could  not  pos- 
sibhr  support.  In  such  cases  the  honest 
legislator  will  state  his  case  and  refuse  to  be 
bound  bv  the  caucus  rule.  These  are  cases, 
however,  where  he  would  be  ready  to  give  up 


166  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

his  political  career  altogether  rather  than  to 
make  any  concession. 

Such  independence  is  possible  to  any 
representative  today,  where  it  is  clearly  a 
case  of  conscience,  without  losing  him  his 
standing  in  the  party.  He  may  even  main- 
tain a  high  position  of  leadership  in  the 
party  after  showing  such  independence  in  an 
individual  case.  Obviously,  if  he  cannot 
conscientiously  stand  by  the  caucus  in  the 
case  of  a  considerable  number  of  leading 
party  measures,  he  really  does  not  belong  in 
the  party  at  all.  It  will  not  be  so  much  a 
case  of  his  being  "read  out  of  the  party"  as 
of  his  automatically  leaving  the  party  be- 
cause unable  to  support  its  program. 

But  there  are,  however,  a  great  many 
questions,  possibly  important  ones,  on  which 
he  may  yield  with  a  clear  conscience  on  the 
ground  that  by  insisting  on  voting  according 
to  his  personal  opinion  he  will  ultimately  do 
more  harm  than  good.  The  harm  would  lie 
in  disrupting  that  political  machinery  which 
is  necessary  for  effective  and  responsible 
legislation. 

Take,  for  example,  an  appropriation  bill 


THE  PARTY  167 

carrying  appropriations  for  many  different 
purposes,  including,  let  us  say,  a  dozen 
different  bureaus  and  commissions  of 
inquiry.  Can  the  individual  vote  on  each 
one  solely  according  to  his  opinion  of  its 
desirability?  Can  even  a  member  of  the 
Appropriations  Committee  itself  make  a 
lone  fight,  involving  waste  of  time  and 
dangerous  friction,  against  what  he  knows 
to  be  the  overwhelming  sentiment  of  his 
party?  Especially  can  he  do  this  when  he 
knows  that  the  members  of  the  opposing  side 
are  not  voting  according  to  personal  con- 
viction, but  as  a  unit  to  embarrass  or  disrupt 
his  side  as  far  as  possible?  Various  friends 
have  frequently  expressed  to  me  surprise  at 
the  attitude  of  some  particular  Congressman 
on  some  particular  question  of  minor  inpor- 
tance.  When  I  have  explained  that  individ- 
ually the  member  was  (say)  in  favor  of  the 
proposition,  but  voted  against  it  because  of 
party  necessity,  the  disgusted  answer  has 
frequently  been,  "Is  that  the  kind  of  men 
we  send  to  Congress?"  I  think  such  an  atti- 
tude is  entirely  unfair  toward  many  of  the 
most  conscientious  and  far-sighted  of  our 


168  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

representatives.  Unless  it  is  a  matter  that 
seems  to  him  to  vitally  affect  our  principles 
of  government,  or  the  very  foundations  of 
our  prosperity,  he  is  justified  in  yielding  his 
individual  opinion.  It  is  not  merely  a  ser- 
vice to  party.  It  may  be  a  service  to  the 
country  in  the  double  sense  that  it  increases 
the  efficiency  of  government  and  also  makes 
more  clear-cut  the  party's  responsibility  to 
the  public. 

It  is  true  that  the  individual  Congressman 
may  take  the  attitude  that  he  will  vote 
always  for  every  measure  according  to 
whether  he  thinks  it  desirable  or  undesirable 
in  itself,  regardless  of  any  party.  In  such 
case,  however,  he  separates  himself  from  all 
parties  and  his  influence  is  largely  destroyed. 
He  no  longer  can  make  himself  felt  in  those 
meetings  where  policies  are  really  deter- 
mined. He  can  only  cast  his  vote  and  make 
his  lone  protest. 

This,  you  see,  is  the  second  great  problem 
of  the  Congressman,  the  first  having  been 
the  question  as  to  how  far  he  shall  be  loyal 
to  the  interests  of  his  own  section  as  against 
what  he  considers  the  general  good.     Not 


THE  PARTY  169 

infrequently  the  question  of  these  two  duties 
comes  into  a  serious  clash.  Obviously,  the 
man  who  breaks  from  party  loyalty  for  the 
sake  of  the  interests  of  his  own  constituents 
is  doing  so  on  a  much  lower  ground  than  he 
who  does  it  because  of  his  loyalty  to  some 
great  principle  of  government.  In  most 
cases  such  action  will  be  due  simply  to  his 
fear  of  his  constituents ;  that  is,  his  fear  that 
he  will  fail  of  re-election.  Of  course,  it  may 
be  that  he  honestly  believes  the  party  policy 
is  destructive  of  the  welfare  of  his  com- 
munity and  that  to  block  it  he  would  be  will- 
ing not  only  to  break  with  the  party,  but  to 
retire  from  public  life  altogether.  This,  I 
think,  is  the  real  standard  of  conscientious 
action.  To  vote  for  a  measure  merely  in 
order  to  stay  in  can  hardly  receive  the  com- 
mendation of  any  right-thinking  man.  To 
vote  for  a  measure  when,  in  order  to  secure 
its  passage,  a  man  is  willing  to  get  out,  is  a 
practice  which  no  one  could  condemn. 

Commonly,  in  the  conflict  between  his  two 
loyalties,  the  representative  will  make  his 
fight  in  the  caucus  in  behalf  of  his  constitu- 
ents.    If  he  is  unable  to  change  the  party 


170  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

policy,  he  will  usually  sacrifice  what  he  con- 
siders the  interests  of  his  constituents  to  the 
maintenance  of  the  coherence  of  his  party. 
In  doing  so  I  think  he  is  following  a  higher 
duty.  For,  after  all,  the  party  is  a  national 
party  representing  the  whole  country  and 
responsible  to  it  for  its  actions.  There  have 
been  conspicuous  cases  where  men  have  re- 
mained loyal  to  the  party  program,  while 
frankly  announcing  that  by  so  doing  they 
were  destroying  every  chance  of  their  own 
continuance  in  public  life.  In  extreme  cases 
the  representative  may  sacrifice  his  loyalty 
to  party  to  his  loyalty  to  section.  In  doing 
so  he  is  almost  certain  to  lose  such  influence 
in  party  councils  as  he  may  have  had  and, 
what  is  more,  it  is  doubtful  if  he  will  win  the 
real  respect  of  his  constituents  in  the  end. 

I  told  you  at  the  outset  that  I  should 
probably  make  your  problems  difficult 
rather  than  easy;  that  I  should  propound 
problems  for  you  rather  than  solve  them  for 
you.  You  see  that  T  have  done  so.  I  fear, 
too,  that  you  may  think  that  I  have  spoken 
from  a  somewhat  low  moral  plane  in  sug- 
gesting that  a  conscientious  man  must  really 


THE  PARTY  171 

confront  problems  of  this  kind.  It  would 
have  been  easy  to  simply  tell  you  that  you 
should  always  vote  for  what  is  right,  but  I 
warned  you  in  the  beginning  that  the  most 
difficult  problem  is  to  find  out  what  is  right. 
The  conditions  are  so  intricate  that  there  is 
no  single  rule  which  can  be  laid  down  to 
guide  a  man's  conduct.  True,  one  may  say 
that  he  should  always  act  for  what  he  thinks 
is  the  general  good  in  the  long  run.  To  that 
I  would  subscribe  as  heartily  as  anyone  else. 
It  is  the  very  fact,  however,  that  the  most 
moral  man  may  conscientiously  believe  that 
yielding  his  own  opinion  for  the  time  being 
may  work  for  the  greater  good  in  the  end 
which  makes  the  decision  difficult. 

It  would  have  been  easy  to  hold  up  to  you 
some  ideal  of  a  body  of  patriotic,  independ- 
ent legislators  having  no  personal  interest, 
no  sectional  interest,  and  no  party  interest, 
but  however  inspiring  such  an  address  might 
have  been  made,  it  would  have  done  little  to 
illuminate  the  problems  which  you  will  have 
to  face  as  you  go  into  the  world  as  it  is.  An 
old  German  friend  of  mine  used  to  remark 
serenely,  "Man  muss  mit  Tatsachen  rech- 


172  POLITICIAN,  PARTY  AND  PEOPLE 

nen  und  das  Unvermeidliche  mit  Wiirde 
tragen" — one  must  reckon  with  the  facts  and 
bear  the  inevitable  with  dignity.  It  is,  I 
think,  a  higher  duty  to  face  inevitable  facts 
as  they  are  and  then  to  strive  conscientiously 
to  work  toward  the  best  results  within  the 
limitations  which  these  facts  impose. 

I  also  told  you  at  the  beginning  of  these 
lectures  that  your  first  duty  was  knowledge 
and  I  come  back  to  that  as  your  final  duty. 
You  must  take  these  matters  seriously;  you 
must  study  them;  you  must  ponder  over 
them.  You  must  study  not  only  what  policy 
would  be  best  if  you  were  a  despot  and  could 
decide  the  matter  alone.  You  must  study 
also  the  facts  of  political  life,  the  facts  of 
human  nature,  the  problems  of  what  can 
actually  be  accomplished,  as  well  as  what  you 
would  like  to  see  accomplished. 

Again,  as  I  said  at  first,  I  have  spoken 
more  strongly  on  one  side  than  I  might 
otherwise  have  done,  because  of  the  character 
of  my  audience.  It  is  because  I  have  felt 
that  it  is  young  men  of  your  type  who  are 
least  tolerant  in  such  matters  and  most  likely 
to  forget  the  necessity  of  efficiency  in  action, 


THE  PARTY  173 

while  glorifying  the  importance  of  your  own 
personal  will  and  opinion.  There  is  a  poem 
by  Edward  Rowland  Sill,  entitled  "Dare 
You?"  which  puts  this  problem  well.  I 
think  it  is  not  misusing  it  to  apply  it  even  in 
the  political  field.  "Doubting  Thomas"  says 
to  "loving  John": 

Tell  me  now,  John,  dare  you  be 

One  of  the  minority 

To  be  lonely  in  your  thought 

Never  visited  or  sought? 

If  you  dare,  come  now  with  me, 

Fearless,  confident,  and  free. 

To  this  John  replies : 

Thomas,  do  you  dare  to  be 
Of  the  great  majority? 

The  poet  would  suggest  that  sometimes  it 
takes  a  higher  courage  to  sink  one's  own 
individuality  of  thought  and  action  in  the 
cause  of  some  higher  "unity."  In  all  walks 
of  life  the  problem  of  when  and  to  what 
extent  this  should  be  done  will  confront  you, 
puzzling  and  recurring;  nowhere  more  than 
in  the  field  of  politics. 


INDEX 

Action,  more  effective  than  discussion  for  good  govern- 
ment      53,  58-59 

Administration,  local,  compared  with  national   64-65 

"Agency   theory"    113-115,  119,  130 

Aldrich,    Senator    138 

Allison,  Senator   138 

Ambition  in  politics    88-89 

American     politics     (Nineteenth     Century),     compared 

with  Eighteenth  Century  English  (Hadley)   139-141 

Appointments,  government    124-126 

Appropriations,   securing    126,  167 

Arbitration  in  industrial  disputes    Ill 

Averaging  interests  of  localities   107-108 

"Big  Five"  in  United  States  Government 138 

Bills,  legislative,  process  of  formation  and  enactment, 

160-161 
Blaine,  James  G.,  91;  quoted,  92. 

"Boss,"  unreasonable  prejudice  against,  57-59;  impor- 
tance, 136. 

British   cabinet    158 

Burke,   Edmund,   quoted 103-106,  116-118 

Business  ethics,  lectures  on   1 

Cabinet    government     142 

Candidate,  should  be  chosen  according  to  leader  he  will 

obey    67-68 

Catholics     40 

Caucus,  party,  —  policies  framed  and  amended  in,  152- 
153;  — debated  upon  in,  158;  — growth  in  power, 
153-154;  — analyzed  and  criticised,  154-155;  — 
open  or  closed,  158;  — secret  legislation  in,  158; 
—  constituents'  interests  defended  in,  170. 
Claims,  of  country,  as  against  party  and  district  .  .  .101-102 

Class  legislation    165-166 

Class-  or  group-interest  party   39-40 


176  INDEX 

Clearing   house    of   information   on   matters    of    public 

policy  needed  28-29 

Commercial  matters,  interference  of  legislator  in 109 

Commission  system  of  government    70 

Common  welfare,  how  best  achieved  6-7 

Compromise  in  legislation  often  necessary   7(5-77 

Confidence   in    representatives   needed    89-92 

Congress,  a  forum  for  argument   161 

Congressional    representatives,    relation    to    the    Presi- 
dent      80-81,  145 

Congressional  votes,  their  importance   71 

Congressmen,  —  should  they  work  solely  for  interests 
of  constituents?  102-103,  120-121;  —bravery  in 
right  action,  121;  — concerned  with  federal  affairs 
in  their  districts,  121-127;  — tariff  questions  before, 
132-133. 
Congressmen.     See  also  Representatives,  Congressional. 

Conscience  and  judgment  in  choice  of  party 42-43 

Constituents,  — claims  of,  as  against  those  of  country, 
104-108,  114,  120-129;  — great  variety  of  interests, 
116-120;  — duty  of  representative  in  following 
opinions  of,  104-106;  — interests  defended  in 
caucus,  170;  loyalty  of  representatives  to,  —  when 
wrong,  169. 
Constitutional    system    in    United    States    Government 

causes   deadlocks    135-136,  140-141,  162-163 

Continuance  of  service  more  important  than  individual 

originality  in  statesmen    96-99 

Contracts,  government,  awarding  of   127 

Cynicism    among    representatives    engendered    by    sus- 
picion      86 

Deadlocks,   occurrence   in    United    States    Government, 

135-136,  140-141,  162-163 

Debate  in  Congress,  no  longer  effective?   160-161 

Democratic  Congress  elected    156 

Democratic  Party,  — in  South,  39;  — and  Republican 
Party,  40. 


INDEX  177 

Democratic  tariff  policy    I56 

Departments,   administrative,  extravagance  in 129-130 

Direct  legislation    111-113 

Direct    primaries    111-112 

Disraeli,  Earl  of,  quoted  151 

Earnestness    in    political    life,    new    spirit    in    United 

States     147-149 

Economy,  difficult  to  maintain  by  Congress   127-129 

Editors,  —  large  following,  37 ;  —  less  trustworthy  than 

supposed,  14. 
Elections,  local,  — should  be  separate  from  national  in 

time  of  holding,  45,  64-65,  69;  — possible  bearing 

on  national  elections,  68-69. 

England,  her  King's   position    146 

English  politics    (Eighteenth  Century),  compared  with 

Nineteenth  Century  American  (by  Hadley)   139-141 

Ethical  viewpoint  of  undergraduates    2-5 

Ethics  of  politics,  Chapter  I. 

Extravagance  in  Government  Departments   129-130 

Fact,  determination  of,  very  difficult  to  voter 29-31 

Facts  and  the  Voter,  Chapter  I. 

Fairness  to  representatives  needed  94 

Familiarity  breeds  contempt  in  politics  91-94 

Foundation   for  present  lectures    1 

Free  press,   greatest  safeguard  of  democratic  govern- 
ment      13 

Germany,  class-interest  parties  in   39 

Government    and    legislation,    matters    of    reason    and 

judgment    (Burke)     104-105 

Hadley,  President  A.  T.,  quoted  ..101-102,  135-136,  139-140 

Hale,  Senator    138 

Headlines,  important   influence    19-21 

Historical  study  needed  for  successful  legislation   9 

Honesty  in  politics   89-91,  94 

House  of  Representatives,  growing  size,  consequences, 

142-144 
Immediate  results,  not  always  possible  in  politics   95 


178  INDEX 

Immoral    voting    79-80 

Independence,  — in  voting,  43-46;  — in  Congress,  168- 
169;     — in     representatives'     judgment,     105-107, 
114-115;  —of  party,  55-56. 
Independence  of  party,  overemphasized  by  college  men, 

55-56 
Independent  action,  not  always  advisable  for  legislators,  83 
Individual   candidates   vs.    strict   party    loyalty,   61-64, 
et  seq.;  78-79. 

Individualism     107-11,  173 

Industrial  disputes,  arbitration  in   Ill 

Information,  accurate,  difficult  to  obtain,  Chapter  I. 
Information  on  public  policy,  clearing  house  needed.  .28-29 

Initiative  and  referendum  35-36,  112 

Interviews,  misrepresented  in  press   16 

Judgment,  hasty,  really  immoral    11-12 

King,  his  position  in  England   146 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  quoted   94 

Knowledge,  voter's  first  duty,  Chapter  I ;    172 

Laboring  class,  studious  of  political  questions   7-8 

Laws,  good,  spoiled  by  poor  framing  and  enforcement.  .  .63 

Leaders,   intellectual    37-38 

Leaders,  —  political,  intelligent  choice  of,  the  voter's 
first  duty,  31-32,  34-35,  37-38;  —choice  of,  means 
choice  of  party,  38-39;  — their  importance,  66-67, 
78 ;  —  relative  power  as  compared  with  relative 
insignificance  of  rank  and  file,  74;  compromises 
often  misunderstood,  77;  displacement  of  old 
leaders  in  United  States,  147. 

Leadership,  political,  psychology  of  76-77 

Legislation,  —  necessity  of  historical  study  for  success- 
ful, 9;  — enforcement  as  important  as  enactment, 
62-63;  —misdirected,  9. 

Legislation,   class    165-166 

Legislation,   direct,  — when   successful,  36;  — dangers 

in,  36,  111-113. 
Legislation,  "private,"  in  Congress  119 


INDEX  179 

Legislation,  hasty  154-156 

Legislation,   secret,  in  caucus    158 

Legislative  Reference  Library  in  Wisconsin 29 

Legislature,  of  what  it  must  consist 66 

Lincoln  as  a  leader  77 

Local  administration  compared  with  national  64-65 

Loyalty,  party,  43-53;  — misunderstood,  54-55,  167- 
168;  increased  necessity  for,  101-102,  134;  Chapter 
V  (p.  135  et  seq.)  ;  — supplanting  loyalty  to  dis- 
trict, 150-151;  — among  Congressmen,  164-166, 
169-170. 
Loyalty  of  representatives  to  constituency,  when  wrong,  169 
Loyalty    of    constituency    to     elected     representatives 

needed     99 

"Machines,"  local,  circumstances  tending  to  continued 

power      68-69 

Maine,  prohibition  in   42 

Majority  rule  in  United  States  legislation 159-161 

Majority  vote,  inevitably   for  best  interests  of  whole? 

109-110 

Malthusian    theory    5 

Mathematical  principles  applied  to  politics   110-112 

Measures  and  men,  go  together   63-64 

"Measures  not  men,"  61;  — best  policy  in  Congressional 
elections,  71-75. 

Men,  rather  than  measures,  in  local  politics   64-65 

Middle  West,  influence  in  politics   142 

Minority,  no  voice  in  legislation    159 

Money   in   politics    87 

Motives  in  politics   87-89 

Municipal  and  other  local  elections   64-65 

Names,  party,  should  be  different  in  local  and  national 

affairs     69-70 

News,  voter  should  compare  and  discriminate  in 26-28 

News  and  "facts,"  difference   16-17 

News,  incorrect,  seldom  retracted,  — bad  influence   ..22-25 


180  INDEX 

Newspaper  correspondents,  — trustworthy,  14;  — often 
ignorant  of  subject,  15-16. 

"One  man  power"    144 

Page,  Edward  D 1 

Parliament,  a,  defined  by  Edmund  Burke 102,  105-106 

Parties,  — political,  in  United  States,  usually  two  great 

parties,    40-41 ;    —  why    smaller    ones    attract    few 

adherents,    41;    — three    great    groups,    38-40;    — 

without  any  policy  for  public  good,  54. 

Party,  the,  and  the  Voter,  Chapter  II. 

Party,  difficulty  of  right  choice,  42-43,  55-56;  relation  of 

representative  to,   135,   et  seq. 
Party  divisions  the  same  for  local,  state,  and  national 
affairs   at  present,  68;   unfortunate  effect  of  this, 
68-69. 
Party  government  and  representative  government,  33- 

34;  —in  United  States,  147-148. 
Party  politics,  national,  differentiated   from  state  and 

local     44-45 

Party  loyalty 43-55,   101-102,   134-135,   150-151,  164-170 

Party  measures,  not  paramount  in  local  administration,  64 
Party  names,  should  differ  in  local  and  national  affairs, 

69-70 

Party  policies,  by  whom  determined 75-78 

Party  responsibility   162-164 

Patronage,  a  difficult  problem  for  Congressmen  ....123-126 

Payne-Aldrich  Tariff  Act  of  1909  29-31 

Peel,   Sir   Robert    151 

Pension  bills,   private    1 19-120 

Periodical   literature,  influence  powerful,   11;   comment 
prejudiced,  25-26. 

Periods  in  party  government  in  United  States  147-148 

Personal  friendship  in  voting   79 

Personalities  in  United  States  Government,  change  in..  138 

Personality  in  politics    38,  61-64 

Piatt,    Senator 138 

Pliancy  necessary  to  good  political  leadership   77-78 


INDEX  181 

Policies  (Presidential),  a  new  element  in  United  States 

Government     143-144 

Policy,  party,  determined  by  leaders  or  rank  and  file  75-78 

Political  economy,  so-called  law  not  moral  force   4-5 

Political  leadership,   psychology  of    76-77 

Politicians,   generally   suspected    85-87 

Politicians    and   statesmen    85 

Politics,    ethical    side    1-4 

Politics,  —  right  and  wrong  in,  hard  to  determine, 
9-11;  — an  honorable  career,  89-90. 

"Pork-barrel,"    the    126 

President,  —  free  from  sectional  control,  147 ;  —  in- 
creasing power  of,  139-145,  163;  — relations  to 
Congress,  80-81,  145;  — unique  position  politically, 
145-146. 
Press,  — injustice  done  public  men  in,  11-19;  ■ — our 
opinions  gained  from,  13;  — power  of,  11-13. 

Primaries,   direct    111-112 

Principle,  change  of,  in  the  United  States  Government, 

138-142 

"Private"   legislation   in   Congress    119 

Problems  propounded,  not  solved,  in  these  lectures 171 

Prohibition,  in  Maine   42 

Prohibition   Party    41 

Promises,   party 155 

Punishment  of  individual  occasional  necessity   70,  83 

Recall    112 

Reed,  Thomas  B.,  —  definition  of  a  statesman,  85 ; 
—  quoted,  110;  — able  to  be  independent  of  con- 
stituents' opinions,  115. 

Reporters  (newspaper),  ethics  high   14-16 

Representative,   Congressional,  — choice   of,   61-62,   70- 

72;    — factors     in    choice,    73-75;    — relations    to 

President,  80-81,  145. 

Representatives,  Congressional.    See  also  Congressmen. 

Representative,    —  and    his    constituency,    Chapter    IV 

(p.  100  et  seq.) ;  — duties  to  constituents,  defined 


182  INDEX 

by  Burke,  103-106,  117-118;  —independence  of 
judgment,  105-107,  114-115,  153;  —controlled  by 
party,  114;  — variety  of  claims  of  constituents, 
115-116;  — independence  of  judgment,  when 
advisable,  166. 
Representative  government  and  party  government. ..  .33-34 

Representative  government,  is  it  satisfactory?   35-36 

Republican   and   Democratic   Parties,   principal   differ- 
ence     40 

Republican  Party  in  Maine .42 

Republican   tariff   policy    156 

Responsibility  for  legislative  policies  fixed 161-164 

"Restitution  of  the  government  to  the  people" 155-156 

Results,  immediate,  not  always  possible  in  pontics 95 

Right  and  wrong  in  politics,  a  complex  question,  Chap- 
ter I. 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  "ruler"  of  United  States   137;  143 

"Rotation  in  office"  a  bad  thing   97-99 

"Rulers"  in  America,  who  are  they?   137-139 

Secrecy  in  caucuses  objectionable   158 

Sectional-interest   party   group    39 

Seniority  in  Congressional  Committee  selection    96 

Separation  of  powers  in  government,  extreme   141 

Service,     long,     more     important     than     originality    in 

statesman    96-99 

Sill,   E.   R.,   quoted 173 

Smith,  Adam,  quoted    109 

Socialist   Party .42-43 

South,  Democratic   Party  in    39 

"Splitting  the  ballot,"  is  it  advisable?   67  et  seq.,  81-84 

"Spoils    System"    124-125,  148 

Spooner,    Senator 138 

State  elections,  duty  of  voters  in,  compared  with  muni- 
cipal and  national  elections    65-66 

State  politics,  vary  with  the  States   66 

System,  old,   breakdown   of  in   United   States   Govern- 
ment      141-144 


INDEX  183 

Taft,    Wm.    H , 143 

Tariff,   varied   bearing   on   different   districts,    131-132; 
—  compromises   in,    132-133. 

Temperament  in  choice  of  party   55 

Tenure  of  office   140  et  seq.,  163 

Tenure  of  Office.    See  also  Continuance  of  Service. 

Tools,  political,  choice  of   60 

Tweed    140 

Vote,  result  nullified  by  too  independent  choice,  67;  81-82 
Voter,  the,  — and  the   Party,  Chapter   II;  — and  the 

Representative,  Chapter   III    61 

Voter,  — ethical  duty  of,  8-10;  — limitation  of  his 
action,  43-44 ;  — independence  of  party,  44 ;  —  con- 
flicting duties  of  in  municipal,  state,  and  national 
elections,  68;  — duty  to  representative  after  elec- 
tion, 84  et  seq. 
Voter,  educated,  ignorance  and  indifference  to  public 

questions     7 

Voting,  immoral 79-80 

Walpole,   Horace    140 

Watchfulness  of  public  servants  needed   89-90 

Wisconsin,  Legislative  Reference  Library  in   29 

Young  men  in  English  politics    95-96 

Young  statesmen,  their  opportunities  in  United  States 

politics     95-96 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


(AY  2  8  1935 


nu> 


J^ 


it 


JAN  2  3  1951/ 

«  3  1955 
ROD 

APR1  6195' 

MAY  4     1961 


m  n 


JW9q- 


7* 


DEC  21  1942 

MAY  21** 


Form  L-9-15m-7,'32 


'Yfif 


AA    000  558  283 


"■■,'•"■••'''.'• 


'v''.'  '••■•■'• '• 

■•■ :  ■••"  ••.-■••'•.■■ 


MbskSS 

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'■'•••'':-:.'  /v.   ■ 


